cnovels | Comic recs: "Hero in the Serpent's Skin", "The Djinn"

Bai Shou, after posing for hours, asks Ruixiang if he's done drawing. Ruixiang laughs.

ShortBox Comics Fair, a digital indie comics fair, is back, and one of the entries this year is Hwei Lim's Hero in the Serpent's Skin. It's a lovely little homage to Chinese fantasy in which Lady Bai (also known as the White Snake) seeks out her lost love and finds him reborn as an artist—an artist in need of a martial arts hero to save him from his deadlines. It's a bit about art, a bit about memory, a bit about identity and gender, and a bit about human joy.

More screencaps + official synopsis

The divine immortal Lady Bai, still mourning the passing of her human lover, misses him so much she returns to earth to seek out his reincarnation, even though he will no longer remember his past life with her.

However, this time, not only is he totally immune to her charms, he also turns out to be an eccentric artist in search of a muse, a hero - with a tail - to draw.

Of course, it's finger-snappingly easy for a divine immortal to become a great hero, instead of a beautiful maiden or a cute snake, but is this really what Lady Bai herself wants? Also, what's so heroic about having a tail??

60 colour pages (page numbers refer to comic pages only and do not include covers or extras.

White Snake shapeshifts into the form of a tall and beefy martial arts hero and Ruixiang asks him why he doesn't have a tail

A white snake's tail extends from the Hero and curls around the hilt of his sword. "How about this?" the hero asks.

Xiaoqing: "Su jie! I mean, Bai Shou! If that's who you like being now! Just, always be someone to me, okay?"

You can purchase a PDF of the comic here until the end of October. You can also read the artist's other comics here, their fancomics here, and their previous reincarnation comic 25 Lives here.

If you're interested in more stories about heroes and genderfluid immortals, I'd also like to rec the manhua 灯神·未偿之愿 The Djinn: Unfulfilled Wishes by 深海巨狗. It's a <10-chapter western fantasy comic about a boy who finds a lamp and asks the djinn to make him a hero, a wish that turns out to be more difficult to fulfill than either of them expected. It has a more serious tone and heavier themes than Serpent's Skin, but it has its moments of levity, a queer romance storyline, and very cute ending extras. You can read raws here on Google Books or the artist's Weibo master post, and the fantranslation here on Mangadex.
A young Rhett sulks. The djinn floats beside him. "You because a hero just like you wanted, but you don't seem that happy though?"