Sunstone

Background

Sunstone is a comic written & illustrated by Stjepan Sejic; a Croatian artist doing work for Image Comics' subsidiary Top Cow. Before it, he'd worked on Witchblade, and had an experimental fantasy comic called Ravine. Sunstone came about in 2010 when he did some illustrations in his free time of a lesbian BDSM couple with black & red hair. He was captivated, so he drew more... and more... and more... eventually spiraling into a full-blown web comic on DeviantArt & later Pixiv.

Other Top Cow comics advertise Sunstone as come for the bondage art, stay for the heartfelt romance, and that's pretty much exactly how I discovered it. You get lured in with scattered drafts & implications of relationships before you commit to the comic, and when you finally dive in you're getting engrossed in some of the best character writing & dialogue of the comic book medium. It's an absolute masterclass.

BDSM

A wise man named Ross Scott once said that "adult media" isn't just a euphamism for porn. It's about being an adult; which in turn means more freedom, more responsibilities, and dealing with the consequences of your actions. Sunstone, at its core, is about maintaining relationships, and the BDSM elements are an on-the-nose metaphor.

BDSM is an act of trust. It's about your partner giving up control and trusting you not to cross their lines. It's setting boundaries, meeting each other's needs, and ensuring you both had a good time in the end. A relationship, just like BDSM, requires communication, planning, and regular check-ins to make sure you're both happy.