Yaoicon, Lettera, and the TDdaki!

Posted on September 18, 2015

For those of you coming to YaoiCon this weekend, come see the Sparkler table run by comics editor Lillian! She’ll have a ton of our paperbacks (including all three volumes of Off*Beat), free postcards, merch (including the new Knights-Errant keychains), and maybe a surprise or two. :3 And speaking of stuff you can get this weekend…the Tokyo Demons dakimakura is now officially on sale! This was a goal of our Membership Drive and was voted on by our readers – thank you so much for making this ridiculous product a reality!

In other news, we’re thrilled to announce that Lêttera (by Studio Kôsen, creators of Windrose) returned this week from its short hiatus! This sexy fantasy series is completely free to read right now, including the most recent pages. Things are really starting to heat up in the newest chapter, so what are you waiting for? Load up on Kôsen comics and have a lovely weekend!

Labor (Day) of Love

Posted on September 7, 2015

It’s Labor Day in the U.S. and Canada, where our company is based, and so I wanted to celebrate by recognizing all the endless hard work and hours that our fantastic team puts in. From our web/graphics team of Lissa and Pachi who do everything from site design and coding fixes to helping put up new pages on time; to Becca, who handles pretty much all of the Sparkler Shop (on top of editing our audio dramas!!); to Leah and Cat, our amazing production and design assistants; to Jill, who gets everyone (who gets paid) paid when she’s not running the podcast or newsletter; our newest additions of Joseph and Hiveworks, who are boosting us with their incredible marketing prowess; and Lianne, who does basically everything else and then some… It’s a great crew of people we’ve assembled behind the scenes to keep Sparkler up and running, day after day, month after month, year after year. (Editor’s note: Let’s not forget Lillian, either, who’s the head of all our precious comics!)

And that’s not counting our wonderful and talented creators as well! Every one of you gives it your all every month, and it’s such a privilege to get to work with you and read the wonderful things you bring to life.

And that brings us to our September issue (#026)! This month, Windrose returns with the explosive start of Volume 2, Skyglass reaches its incredible conclusion, Orange Junk is back from its one-month hiatus, we all get to enjoy a charming new installment of The Cat Lover’s Circumstances, and everyone girds themselves for battle in Witch’s Quarry! Our podcast this month is about Tabletop RPGs, and includes an announcement of Sparkler’s next gaming project. :D

Knights-Errant is taking a month off (as is Tokyo Demons), but we’ll have some fun guest comics going up in its absence, and you can comfort yourself by purchasing these fabulous Knights-Errant keychains, now available in the Sparkler Shop! Or, if you happen to be going to YaoiCon this month, you can buy them in person (from me, not Jenn, sadly) at the Sparkler table. Huzzah!

-Lillian (comics editor)

Year 3!!

Posted on August 14, 2015

Wow… Look how far we’ve come! Three years, six novels, over a thousand pages of comics, hours of audio dramas, and hundreds of loyal, devoted fans. It’s kind of mind-blowing to think about it, really, and things are only going to get better from here. Thanks to everyone who backed our successful Kickstarter (over 16K reached!!), we’re starting off Year 3 strong, and hope to only get stronger along the way!

To celebrate our first issue of the new Sparkler Year, Issue #025, we’ve got new installments of Skyglass, Knights-Errant, and Tokyo Demons, plus another HUGE chunk of Witch’s Quarry, including almost 20 brand-new pages of gender-bending fantasy adventure. And that’s not to mention the latest chapter of our favorite adorable audio drama, The Cat Lover’s Circumstances, back from its long break. :-D Combined with a new episode of our Sparkler Podcast (on video games), this issue is almost 200 pages long with 2 hours of audio!

It’s an August issue that’s hot, sweet, exciting, and full of magic, sure to delight and entertain through the final dog days of summer. Enjoy!!

Sunshine & Rainbows,

The Sparkler Team

Note: Unfortunately, due to family circumstances, the start of Windrose Vol. 2 is currently delayed. We hope to see it return in September or October!

Issue #024–Summer heats up, and so does our Kickstarter!

Posted on July 7, 2015

Hello all!

I’m done with Anime Expo and moving on to Comicon, but in-between, we have a great issue for you all! New chapters of Skyglass, Knights-Errant, and Orange Junk this month, plus HUGE changes in Tokyo Demons, and a whopping pile of Witch’s Quarry, to prepare for its new pages to start in August! Whew! Plus, our Membership Exclusive of the month is a 62-page side story to Witch’s Quarry–“Rogue x Knight” covers a bit of Wesyng’s backstory, or at least the part of it that overlaps with what Deshad was up to when he came up with his crazy prince-and-the-pauper scheme. It’s sexy and funny and dramatic, and you’re gonna love it.

So the other big news of the month, which technically started last month and is now continuing, is that we’re currently running a Kickstarter campaign to help fund Year 3 of the magazine. We’ve always had great support from our loyal fans, but we want to push for more stability, and maybe even be able to grow and expand a bit more in the coming year! Our creators have been incredibly generous with their offerings in the rewards tiers, and its their work that you’re funding with your precious Kickstarter dollars, so if you like what we do here and you want to see more of it, check it out, share it around, and think about donating! We can’t do this without you. <3 <3 <3

Check out the Year 3 Kickstarter here!

Onward and upward!

Lillian (head of comics)

Issue #023, and Happy Birthday to ME!

Posted on June 2, 2015

Hi Sparkler Fans,

Guess what?! It’s my birthday this month! And guess who just completely coincidentally made all my birthday wishes come true? Jen Lee Quick, that’s who! Returning to Off*Beat for a little encore, this month features a brand new chapter, set in the middle of Volume 3. Cut from the original release of the series, we thought it’d be fun to bring it out now, and give all you fans a taste of this little missing interlude. It’s so great to see the old gang back together again… I couldn’t have asked for a better present. *sob* You get a little sample this week in Sparkler Monthly Issue #023, with the rest of the chapter going live on June 15th. Hooray!

In other Jen-Quick-related news, Gatesmith is going on a hiatus for a bit so that Jen can return to drawing Witch’s Quarry–we’ll be updating with new pages starting in August, so from now until then we’ll be blitzing through the chapters that were previously posted on Inkblazers and SmackJeeves, getting all you Sparkler readers caught up and ready for the latest and greatest! There’s lots of excitement in store, starting with a drakkun fight in Chapter 4! It’s awesome to see Vee in action doing knight-ly things…

And speaking of knights, things get a little rough for poor Wilfrid in Knights-Errant this month. Ouch… Plus, the modeling competition reaches its final stage in Orange Junk, all hell breaks loose in Tokyo Demons, and the healing begins and gets very interrupted in Skyglass! Not to mention our Membership Exclusive of the month is a Sparkler School from Lianne, author and English-adaptation-expert extraordinaire about writing dialogue. You don’t want to miss it!

The Sparkler Team

May the Fourth (er…Fifth…) Be With You!

Posted on May 5, 2015

(I’m not just a manga nerd! I’m an all-around nerd! :-D )

Ah, I’m so excited about our May issue!! After folding the first 40 pages of Jennifer Doyle’s amazing political drama Knights-Errant into the magazine last month, we finally get to update with new pages!! I’m super psyched to be working with Jen, and even more psyched to bring you all the next phase of this fantastic story. And in honor of the new start, this month’s Member Exclusive is a behind-the-scenes podcast chat with me (and Becca) and Jen—listen in as we basically shoot the breeze for an hour, revealing both my internet lurker tendencies, and Jen and my respective overly-educated liberal arts backgrounds! Yesss…

But that’s not all we’ve got on the comics front. “For Peace” wraps up its mini-series run this month, with a lovely and charming conclusion (lady truckers are so sweet to each other!), and volume 1 of Windrose ends in a seriously epic, classic manga fashion! You’re going to love this amazing finish! Plus there’s a hilarious new installment of Orange Junk and the latest thrilling chapter of Skyglass.

So when do you get to read all this great stuff? Well, paid members can download either high-rez PDFs or ebook files of the full issue right away—not to mention get access to our Membership exclusive, which is the above-mentioned podcast with Jennifer Doyle. For folks reading for free, comics update either Monday, Wednesday and Friday, or Tuesday and Thursday, depending on the series. So you’ll get to read everything, it’ll just take a little patience!

The flip side is that this means we still have a bunch of amazing comics continuing from last month as well—from the eerie finale of the first volume of Gatesmith to the mind-blowing magical battle of Mahou Josei Chimaka, our ongoing comics are not to be missed! And that’s not even counting Lettera and Witch’s Quarry which are still going strong!

In other news, most of the Sparkler team, plus several Sparkler creators will all be at the Toronto Comic Arts Festival the weekend of May 10^th and 11^th—stop by, say hi, and pick up some Sparkler goodies, including print copies of The Ring of Saturn, hot off the presses! Exciting!!

In other, other news, we passed 200 members last week in our Membership Drive, but we’re still a long way from where we want to be in order to keep the company stable, let alone growing—the thing we need the most now, though, is just more awareness. So if you like what we do here, recommend us to a friend! Tell them about your favorite comic, get them to try out one of our awesome audio dramas, sit on them and read them the first chapter of one of our fabulous prose series… We hope they’ll find something that they love about Sparkler too, and then pass it along to the next future fan!

The Sparkler Team

A little spring cleaning!

Posted on April 16, 2015

Hi, Sparkler fans! We hope you enjoy our delightfully orange color this month to celebrate Orange Junk‘s debut in our magazine with the all-new Chapter 8, available in this month’s issue! And welcome to the digital pages of our magazine, Heldrad. <3

We figured it was time to do a little spring cleaning around here. Hope you like the new look of the site as much as we all do! This is the last in a long string of site updates that have been in progress since the start of this year—but I think we’re finally done for a while! Whew!

While the front page obviously looks different, hopefully your overall experience continues to be as good, if not better than ever. A lot of the changes were done behind the scenes, as we streamline the back end of the site to make maintenance easier, but the most important thing is that you readers can find what you’re looking for, enjoy it, and then share it with others!

But probably the most exciting thing about this update is that we wound up with nearly 100 pages of new comics for you all to enjoy in Issue #021 this month! No wonder I’m so tired. :) Between the end of Gatesmith vol. 1, the magical finale of “Mahou Josei Chimaka,” a silly and sexy Dead Endings side story (our Membership Exclusive of the month), the hilarious new chapter of Orange Junk, plus ongoing updates of Lettera and Witch’s Quarry, we’ve got more amazing comics than you can shake a mop at! And that’s not counting the finale of Dusk in Kalevia on the light novels front, plus a new installment of The Cat Lover’s Circumstances!

The best part, too, is that now we’re in countdown mode to new pages from Knights-Errant as well! Our next issue goes up on May 4th, and in addition to our regular stellar line-up, we’ll be starting the new and ongoing serialization of Jennifer Doyle’s dark historical drama. I, for one, am super stoked!

Anyway, we’re gearing up to head into Year 3 of the magazine this summer, and we couldn’t have made it this far without your enthusiastic support. We hope that you continue to enjoy what our teams are creating, and that you help spread the word about Sparkler and the great work our artists and writers have been producing! This can’t happen without you all, and we’re eager to start Year 3 off strong!

-Lillian (head of comics)

Knights-Errant by Jennifer Doyle joins Sparkler!

Posted on April 6, 2015

Read Knights-Errant now!

We’re thrilled to announce the newest addition to Sparkler Monthly, and our second color comic: the medieval political drama Knights-Errant by Jennifer Doyle!

This is a fantastic comic many of you are familiar with, and we’re proud to publish this new incarnation (formerly called Pavane) in the digital pages of our magazine. The complete Chapter 1 is available free right now, and Chapter 2 pages and beyond will be serialized in bulk in Sparkler Monthly, starting in the May issue (Issue 22). We hope you enjoy this comic as much as we have!