Shades of A, Shades After
March 9, 2015 4:38 AM   Subscribe

Shades of A is a webcomic about asexual Muslim Anwar, his genderqueer best friend JD, and his tentative steps towards a relationship with his boyfriend Chris. Starting as Anwar and JD graduate from uni, Shades of A is about navigating personal identity, sex and relationships as a young adult in a complex world.

The initial teaser:
When openly asexual Anwar Sardar gets dragged to a kink night by his (soon to be ex) best mate, JD; he is surprised to make friends with Chris Slate, a middle aged transvestite with a penchant for Dr Who. Convinced they’ll never meet again Anwar puts him out of his mind, but the awkwardly charming man keeps turning up in his life.
As you can guess from the title, Shades of A began as a take on the Fifty Shades of Grey books, with a healthier depiction of BDSM and intentional representation of gender and sexual minorities. It's developed quite a lot since then! The entire first book is now available in print form, and the comic continues as Shades After.

Shades of A and Shades After are written and drawn by Tab Kimpton, who previously produced KhaosKomix, a set of interlinked coming-of-age stories about a group of LGBT high-school friends. Similarly to Dave Willis's Dumbing of Age and its Slipshine specials (previously), each Khaos Komix storyline has a more sexually explicit side story, hosted separately at Tab's site, Discord Comics.

Tab also writes and draws an adorable series of Minority Monsters, including Captain Sashay the Genderqueer Merperson and Madame Lucie Decline the Asexual Succubus.
posted by daisyk (8 comments total) 23 users marked this as a favorite
 
Glad to see this posted here. I loved KhaosKomix but haven't yet checked out Shades of A - looking forward to doing so!
posted by Pallas Athena at 5:41 AM on March 9, 2015 [1 favorite]


How awesome! Looking forward to checking this out. Thanks for posting!
posted by Ziggy500 at 6:00 AM on March 9, 2015 [1 favorite]


I'm loving "Shades of A" (the only one I've checked out so far, and can't stop reading), thank you!
posted by taz at 8:19 AM on March 9, 2015 [1 favorite]


I'm so glad people are liking this.

Since I haven't read any of the 50SoG books, only dissections of the first one, I have no idea if Shades After is following the plotline of book two at all. Can anyone offer an opinion on that?
posted by daisyk at 2:06 PM on March 9, 2015


thank you for posting this.
posted by and they trembled before her fury at 2:35 PM on March 9, 2015 [1 favorite]


I loved Khaos Komix and hadn't realized that Tab had started a new project, so thanks for posting this!
posted by bile and syntax at 5:41 PM on March 9, 2015 [1 favorite]


So I finished reading through the material that was available. I'm still figuring out my own asexuality right now, and I think I got something out of the comic? I don't know, maybe just more stuff to think about. But to reiterate my previous comment, thanks for posting this.
posted by and they trembled before her fury at 4:55 AM on March 10, 2015 [2 favorites]


I just read the whole thing and added it to my Feedly for future updates. Thank you for posting this!
posted by Lexica at 9:14 PM on March 11, 2015 [1 favorite]


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