Sorcerers & Secretaries by Amy Kim Ganter amazon

I’ve previewed some of Tokyopop’s original graphic novels online. They put out so much product, but only a few of the titles appeal to me. After seeing a couple chapters of Sorcerers & Secretaries online I decided to order the book.

Nicole goes to school and has a boring job as a receptionist. She is a bit of a loner, and not very assertive about expressing her true feelings to friends and family. The activity that engages her the most is writing a fantasy story in a special notebook. She uses her notebook to escape from the mundane details of daily life.

Josh Kim is a bookstore clerk and Nicole’s former neighbor. He’s a total flirt, keeping a collection of girls’ numbers but rarely calling them. He has a crush on Nicole, partly because she seems so unattainable, and when they lived in the same building they used to hang out. When he sees Nicole browsing in his bookstore he leaps over stacks of books and shoves a cashier out of the way, just so he can talk with her. He asks Nicole for her phone number, and she decides that she’ll give him a chance since she’s feeling lonely. But she tells him to meet her at a coffee shop, because she’s well aware of Josh’s habit of never following through with anything. Are Josh and Nicole going to grow closer, or is Nicole going to retreat to her fantasy world?

Ganter’s an accomplished artist with a background in web comics. She’s also published a piece in the second Flight anthology. The art captures Josh’s exuberance and the fantastic world that Nicole finds refuge in during her dreams. Sometimes Nicole’s fantasy life blends with reality in unexpected ways.

You can view art and read the first three chapters of the book on the Sorcerers & Secretaries section of Ganter’s web site, Felaxx.com.