ANNOUNCEMENT: Read Our New BL Webtoon RIGHT NOW!
Lifeline Comics launches a new WEBTOON, "Love at Second Bite" - a college Vampire BL! And we need YOUR HELP to win Webtoon's new contest!
Hello Lifeline Comics Readers!
The day is finally here! We’ve officially launched our new Webcomic series, Love at Second Bite, as a competitor in Webtoon’s “Webcomic Legends 2025” contest!
Below, we’ll talk about the making of this new series (which we are SO excited about), as well as how YOU can help us win the contest!
We’ll also talk about our experience tabling at Emerald City Comic Con, our Oscars Parties, as well as a couple of Oscars movies we missed out on in our last newsletter!
Let’s dive in!
Our New BL WEBTOON - “Love at Second Bite” Launches on WEBTOON
Phil: We are so excited to finally debut our brand new webcomic: Love at Second Bite!
“Liam Graves is a cheerful vampire who misses his days in the sun. Dean Hikaru is his gloomy and secretive neighbor. Will the two find a connection at their mysterious college: Hemlock University?”
This is a true passion project for both Kat and myself, and we genuinely couldn’t be more excited to finally put it out into the world. If you’ve enjoyed any of our previous comics, then we know you’ll absolutely love this one.
The launch of this webcomic coincides with Webtoon’s new “Webcomic Legends 2025” Contest. Reading the comic for free helps our chances of placing in the contest, so we invite you to show your support and check out this new series today!
How We Came Up With Our BL WEBTOON
Kat: Phil and I have been wanting to write a BL WEBTOON for a few years now. It’s a side of queer romance we haven’t touched and a genre with a lot of eyes on it. And with Slice of Life focusing on the “everyday”, we wanted Love at Second Bite to have a more genre spin. But it actually took us a while to figure out what that genre would be!
We knew we wanted this to be more action driven and have a school angle to it. And believe it or not, our first pitch looked very different from this one. Phil and I have always been fascinated by the love of K-pop and the fan culture surrounding it. Our first pitch was going to heavily dive into the world of K-pop with an unexpected action twist. But after hours of research and writing sessions, this concept just never came together for us.
Phil and I still really wanted to participate in this contest and write a BL. So we stripped the story down and went back to basics. Phil reminded me of a pitch that we came up with a few months before - a sunny vampire that can only come out at night falls in love with a gloomy vampire who can go in the sun. This original pitch was actually for a GL, but it was easily adaptable to become a BL.
Once we nailed down the concept, the story just flowed out of us. We started to build a mythos, dig deeper into the romance, and develop their supporting characters. A story we couldn’t crack then became one of our favorites to tell!
The Contest
Phil: The “Webcomic Legends 2025” Contest began last night, and we fast-tracked the creation of this comic to debut as an entry in the contest.
In total, 40 winners will be selected for the contest for a combination of Cash Prizes and offers to become Webtoon Original Series. We would be absolutely blown away to be among the forty winners. And with audience participation being one of the judging criteria, we appreciate any Reads, Likes, Subscribes, Ratings, and Shares you can give to “Love at Second Bite” to help our chances!
The Manga Influence
Phil: We’ve learned a lot since launching Slice of Life three-and-a-half years ago (and since participating in Webtoon’s “Call to Action” contest two years ago).
One thing that has become abundantly clear is that Webtoon audiences really gravitate towards Manga/Manhwa art styles. So we really wanted to lean into this with our new series — both to cater to the audience we’re targeting AND to have a book that looks really different from the rest of the Lifeline Comics library.
We connected with series artist Tabby Chan by complete coincidence. Tabby’s sister, Rafi de Sousa, is a frequent collaborator of ours and is our artist on The Little Mermaid & The Pirate Queen. Rafi asked us if she could bring Tabby in to help color her cover for the first issue of TLMATPQ and shared Tabby’s portfolio with us — which just so happened to be exactly what we were looking for at the time for our new webcomic!
And the rest is history!
Building a World with Rich Queer Characters
Kat: Just like Slice of Life, it was important to us that this wasn’t JUST a romance story. The boys’ blossoming romance is at the center, but there are so many other nuances to this supernatural college webcomic.
Love at Second Bite will explore Dean and Liam’s very different family dynamics as we put a twist to your classic vampire stories. Vampire stories tend to either pick up from the first bite or a century later. We wanted to explore the tale of vampires relatively new to being supernatural without it being their first day. This will bring some interesting stories that not only tie to our leads, but the characters surrounding them.
LGBTQ Spectrum
Phil: As always, we’re most interested in telling stories with a lot of different LGBTQ+ characters. So in addition to our Gay (Dean) and Bisexual (Liam) leads, you can look forward to plenty of other Queer characters in this book!
We can tease an upcoming Girl Love relationship that will also be pretty pivotal to the plot, as well as a Trans lead who will be incredibly important to Liam.
We’re also particularly excited to explore Bisexuality from a male perspective — something we haven’t had the chance to do in our own writing yet, but have explored plenty through other writers’ contributions to Bi Visibility.
Help Us Win the Contest!
Phil: Even so early into its run, we truly believe there’s something special about “Love at Second Bite”. We invite you all to take this journey with us and promise that we have tons of surprises planned for Liam, Dean, and the rest of the cast of this new webcomic.
Read the comic on Webtoon for free today, and be sure to Like, Subscribe, Comment, and Rate the series to help our chances of placing in the contest!
Thank you, as always, for your support!
Current Campaigns Reminder
Phil: Let’s give a quick reminder of our current and upcoming campaigns!
ENDING THURSDAY: Rainbow Canvas: Valentine’s 2025 Annual
“BRAND NEW Wholesome Queer Romance stories from eleven of your favorite Boy Love & Girl Love Webtoon Canvas series!”
ENDING THURSDAY: Emerald City Comic Con 2025 Exclusive “Witches of Oz #1” Variant Covers
“Spend ONE SHORT DAY at ECCC with new Variants for our GLINDA X WICKED WITCH Mature Romance Comic! Art by: Bob Quinn (X-Factor)”
LIVE NOW: The Beast & Snow #1-3: Vampire Snow White vs. the Evil Queen
“The Secret Origins of the EVIL QUEEN Revealed! WEREWOLF BELLE and VAMPIRE SNOW take their relationship to the next level. Mature 18+”
LAUNCHING MONDAY: The Dancer Vol. 1: Psychological Martial Arts Graphic Novel
“A Dancer/ASSASSIN is forced to relive the trauma of witnessing her parents' murder as a child. COLLECTING THE COMPLETE MINISERIES!”
What Have We Been Up To?
Let’s talk about how we’ve kept busy these last few weeks!
Tabling at Emerald City Comic Con
Kat: Emerald City Comic Con has quickly become one of our favorite cons to table at! Traveling across the coast gives us an opportunity to see a wonderful mix of familiar and new faces. We truly feel like we made new fans at the show, and it was an honor seeing so many Kickstarter backers and WEBTOON readers come up to us for the first time.
This is the first time selling Transphoria outside of Kickstarter, and the support was tremendous. We also debuted the Emerald City Comic Con exclusive Witches of Oz cover, and the lenticular cover was a true hit. It was a real eye catcher as people passed the table. I have a feeling it won’t be the last lenticular exclusive!
Phil: It’s always nice heading to a new location — in this case, a completely different coast — because it means we get to connect with an entirely different crowd. This goes for both fans AND our collaborators! We had the pleasure of meeting B. Rowanbrook (writer of Misty Memories in Transphoria) for the first time in person and hand-delivering a comp copy of the anthology!
Phil: We also got to connect with Nickelodeon VP of Business and Legal Affairs Britton Payne over a hilarious story where he used our “Slice of Life” logo in one of his PowerPoint presentations to discuss the “slice of life” genre, not realizing it was the logo of our comic series. He also shared some wonderful insights with us from the various panels he participates in.
Phil: The first Con of the year is a great reminder of why we do Cons in the first place. They’re the opportunity to connect with existing fans (we easily met around thirty Kickstarter backers/Webtoon readers for the first time at this show), to meet new fans, and to build new relationships with people in the industry. We had the pleasure of connecting with dozens of comic creators — both folks who we were already familiar with and folks who we became fans of at the show!
Phil: Traveling to Seattle also gives us the opportunity to see some of my fiancé Julius’ extended family. They’re always so welcoming, and it was great to hang out with his Uncle and cousin at the convention (and to give them some comics)!
Kat: We worked a ton, but we also left a bit of time for some fun and food. We went to great local restaurants including: James Beard award winning, Communion (that I was too busy eating to take pictures). The up and coming chain: Salt & Straw - as someone who loves savory food, ice cream with salt is the best type of ice cream. And we also returned to The Dough Zone, which is still some of the best dumplings we’ve ever had in the states, and conveniently right across the street from the convention center.
And right before our flight, Phil and I had some time to kill so we hit up the local arcade, Gameworks.
Kat: We’ll leave you with some fun cosplays we saw along the way!
Oscars Party(ies)
Phil: Every year, my cousin Kristie and her wife Sally throw a huge Oscars party. And this year, I finally attended for the first time!
The “theme” for this year’s party was “Wicked” — with the entire apartment decked out as Emerald City and Oz!
Kristie and Sally go all-out, transforming the entire space with everything from streamers, to photo backdrops, to grimmeries, to green elixirs.
Every attendee is also given a random “Wicked” character to dress as. And let me tell you, people go all-out with their costumes!
I was randomly assigned Nessarose Fropp, Elephaba’s sister and future Wicked Witch of the East, as my costume.
So I tried to channel my inner “Act II Nessa” for my look.
My fiancé Julius got the Cowardly Lion — creating a couple that nobody asked for.
They also went all-out with Oscar movie-themed desserts. Mostly “Wicked” (keeping with the theme of the rest of the party), but a few “Substance”-themed desserts also made their way in.
My Oscar Ballot didn’t do too hot this year, so I’m going to redouble my efforts next year to be champion of the party!
Kat: My friend, Luke, and I have a tradition where we watch the Oscars together. Sadly, he and his partner were hit with covid, so we couldn’t meet up for our annual party.
But I still watched the Oscars with my family, and I have to say it was one of my favorites in a while. Conan’s comedic style is nearly perfect for this type of award show. He likes to poke fun at the A-listers, but he’ll always make himself the bigger butt of a joke. It still brings that celeb jab the Oscars are known for, while not crossing the line like so many other hosts who have come before.
There weren’t any mind-blowing wins, but the awards spread their love to a few films instead of a boring one movie sweep. My two highlights were Anora’s win for Best Picture as a statement for the importance of the small indie darling AND, by far, the Wizard of Oz medley. That’s a performance I’m going to remember for years to come and will be playing on repeat!
Knicks Vs The Warriors Game
Kat: My Dad and I have made it a tradition to go to at least one basketball game a year with each other. Last year we saw Lebron vs. the Knicks and this time we had another superstar in the house - Steph Curry.
It was astonishing to watch Steph play a few feet away from us, as he did his Steph thing and went into overdrive in those last two quarters. There’s nothing like witnessing a master at his craft!
We truly had a New York City night as the lead of Hamilton played for the halftime show! Can you believe Hamilton has been on Broadway for 10 years?! 😲
Media
Let’s discuss some non-comics media!
Nickel Boys
Phil: Nickle Boys was a movie I had hoped to catch before the Oscars but hadn’t gotten the chance to see. Thankfully, I was able to watch it on the plane on the way to Seattle.
This period piece follows two Black teenagers who are sent to an abusive reform school in the 1960s. The film explores all of the beauty and tragedy of their lives — focusing in equal parts on the injustices they experience and the intelligence, ingenuity, and empathy of leads Elwood and Turner. It’s a difficult watch at times, but so worth it for the relationship at the core of the film.
One of the most interesting aspects of Nickle Boys is its first-person camera perspective. We shift between the first-person view from Elwood’s and Turner’s perspectives — sometimes even switching back-and-forth between them during the same scene/conversation. It’s a really unique style that (obviously) puts us in the shoes of our main characters. But two of the most interesting aspects of this approach are (1.) that we almost never get to see both leads in the same shot, and (2.) during several “flashforward” segments when the perspective switches to “almost first person” perspective where the camera is behind the head of the “future” version of our lead.
In both style and content, Nickle Boys is a movie that will stick with you and give you a lot to think and talk about.
A Real Pain
Kat: A Real Pain somehow slipped under my radar for my Oscar binge, but I’m glad I was able to squeeze it in as part of my inflight entertainment heading to Seattle for Emerald City Comic Con. (This for sure would have made my Top 3 if I had watched it in time for our previous ranking.)
Kieran Culkin (Benji) and Jesse Eisenberg (David) play cousins exploring their Jewish roots in a character piece that shines through Benji and David’s less than cliche, odd couple dynamic. Culkin plays a charismatic, empathic soul who is simultaneously fighting his own internal demons. Eisenberg is the perfect foil as the cousin who seems to have it all put together, but as you peel back his layers - David is an insecure man who’s jealous of Benji’s ease to connect with people.
The cousins have a truly complicated relationship nuanced through Culkin and Eisenberg’s performances. I love a character piece where the people feel lived in! A Real Pain is an organic portrayal at a modern mental health journey, all while keeping in perspective the very different struggles their Jewish ancestors went through only a century before.
Hell’s Kitchen Season 23
Spoilers Ahead
Kat: The biggest difference between Top Chef and Hell’s Kitchen is that Hell’s Kitchen had always highlighted up and coming chefs…until this year. Instead of line cooks, Gordon Ramsay created a season for head chefs…which honestly makes more sense for the grand prize. There may be less comedic moments and drama (which has been phasing out from food competition programs anyways), but it makes for a more competitive show.
It’s always been a little bit of a head scratcher that a person who has never been a head chef is now expected to be a head chef for none other than Gordon Ramsay. Season 23 brings experienced head chefs to fight to become one of the biggest culinary star’s employee.
This season weeded out some of the chefs that I thought would have been strong competitors towards the middle of the season, but both Hannah and Kyle were dark horses that truly rose to the occasion. It was the first season in a while where I would’ve been happy if either chef had won.
Kyle did end up winning, which is also a huge win for the LGBTQ community as the first gay male winner on Hell’s Kitchen! Kyle entered the competition with a loud, pink zebra number, and he left with that same queer energy to embrace his natural leadership skills.
Comics
Let's discuss some comics we've enjoyed recently!
As always, we’ll spotlighting an Indie Book, a DC/Marvel book, a Live Kickstarter book, and a Webcomic!
Indie Comic: The Seasons (Image Comics/Giant Generator)
Kat: Rick Remender is the master at any and every genre. If I see his name, it’s a guarantee pick up, no matter the subject. And this book was no exception. The Seasons is both fun and whimsical with a unique noir twist as Remender and Paul Azaceta explore the very different personalities of Spring and her sisters, which are portrayed beautifully through Azaceta’s contrasting visuals. The characters are just as mysterious as the plot, with Remender trickling just enough information to leave readers begging for more.
Marvel: Cable Love & Chrome
Kat: The 90’s darling returns in a series that expertly balances nostalgia with modern storytelling. David Pepose and Mike Henderson craft an actual love letter to Cable as he finds a love of his own all while the real life threats of his disease comes into full affect. Cable: Love and Chrome is a well-balanced miniseries for hardcore fans and new readers alike.
Kickstarter: Come Out and Play: The Queer Sports Project
“When the world puts queer rights on defense, queer culture goes on offense! A full-color comics anthology about LGBTQ+ sports & athletes.”
Phil: It’s hard to get more up-our-alley than with a Queer anthology. And Come Out and Play promises an anthology that is a perfect read for Kat and myself.
With over 250 pages of queer sports comics, Come Out and Play sports a creative team of over 30 contributors with a healthy mix of established familiar faces (such as Brent Fisher and Richard Fairgray) and new blood.
And while there aren’t a ton of preview pages on the campaign, the ones that are showcased look fantastic.
We need Queer comics now more than ever. So it warms our hearts to see more awesome queer anthologies hit Kickstarter and find success. We truly can’t wait to read this one!
Back “Come Out and Play” here!
Webcomic: The End of Time (GL)
“Elise's dad's a priest, which makes her obsession with the occult a little complicated. When a failed ritual leads her to accidentally summoning the demon Keres - who won't leave her side until she makes a wish - an unlikely friendship forms, which could possibly lead to more.“
Phil: A Supernatural Girl Love romance between the Occult-obsessed Elise and the lesser demon Keres who she unintentionally summons. The End of Time is a fun and well-paced comic that takes its time revealing details about our lead characters and their motivations. Information is trickled in, but creator Oku always leaves enough unsaid to maintain a sense of intrigue about the characters and their motivations/histories.
The series quickly builds up an interesting cast of supporting characters as well — including Elise’s family (her brother and her Priest father), her long-time school friend Aria, and a pair of demons who are friends with Keres. I love a series with a strong supporting cast, and TEoT paces its introduction of its supporting cast especially well.
Read “The End of Times” on Webtoon!
In Closing
Thanks, as always, for reading!
PLEASE make sure to check out our new Webcomic, Love at Second Bite. And we would really appreciate your Liking, Subscribing, Commenting, and Rating the series — all of which will help our chances in the “Webcomic Legends 2025” Contest.
Subscribe above for biweekly updates on our future projects!
Buy Lifeline Comics on our Website!
Current Kickstarters:
Rainbow Canvas: Valentine’s Annual 2025 (Ending 3/13)
Witches of Oz - Emerald City Comic Con ‘25 Excl. Variants (Ending 3/13)
The Beast & Snow #1-3 - Vamp Snow White vs. Evil Queen (Ending 4/03)
The Dancer Vol. 1: Psychological Martial Arts Graphic Novel (Launching 3/17)
Next Cons/Events:
Miami Pride (Florida) - April 5th & 6th
C2E2 (Chicago, IL) - April 11-13
This was a great read! I haven’t read a ton of webtoons but I feel like you made great use of the format, genre and the art was clean and beautiful!
Subscribed to Love at Second Bite! Thanks for sharing so much about its creation.