The best comic books about sexuality

Most of the people I’ve spoken to received terrible sex and relationship education. This is the comic book to rectify that. Buy it for young people so that they have a better experience than you did, and buy it for yourself to make up for what you went through back then.

Let’s Talk About It is an awesome inclusive, accessible graphic book, and beautifully illustrated throughout. Erika and Matthew do a great job of covering the questions young people really want answered, through dialogues between a beautifully drawn cast of characters who are navigating their own way through this complex, confusing territory. 

The guidance given is warm, friendly, realistic, and clear, likely to alleviate much of the fear and shame we all have around these topics.

Post #metoo there’s a lot more awareness around sexual abuse and assault, but still few books to help readers to understand why it impacts them the way it does. 

In The Courage to Be Me, cartooning psychologist Nina Burrowes presents what we know from the science of sexual trauma, and tells the stories of a group who support each other around their experiences. 

Having several different stories, all illustrated by different comic artists, emphasises the diverse forms that assault and abuse can take, and the ways in which they hit us all differently. Despite the tough topics covered, this is an uplifting book which helps the reader to see their experiences reflected, and to learn some skills for how to look after themselves around what happened with the kindness they deserve.

I’m a huge fan of queer graphic memoirs and Fun Home is my favourite one. It’s one of the most-read books on my bookshelf.

Moving between present-day and different times in her life, this stunningly illustrated book tells the story of how Bechdel comes into her own sexuality, woven together with her memories of her relationship with her father and how she came to understand his sexuality after his death. 

While this is only one person’s story, reading this book invites us to consider how our own sexualities were shaped by the place and time we grew up in, and by the adults and other children around us and how they related to their own sexualities, genders, bodies, and feelings.

No Straight Lines brings together multiple comic creators from four decades of comics by and about LGBTQ+ people. If you want to get a sense of how the queer community has developed and changed over time, and how comics have reflected - and impacted - that, then this anthology is definitely the place to go. 

From early underground gay and lesbian comics, through responses to the AIDS crisis, to more recent webcomics and trans memoirs, this book takes the reader on a historical journey and introduces them to many creators of fictional and non-fictional comics who they may well want to read more from.

There are very few books - let alone graphic books - out there covering asexuality. This comic strikes a great balance between informing the reader about asexuality, and challenging many of the myths that still persist around it, as well as telling Rebecca’s own story of coming to understand her ace experience.

How to be ace is a great, accessible, engaging read for anyone on the ace or aro spectrum themselves. It’s also a very helpful book for everyone to get a better sense of the diversity of a/sexual experience.