Alice Oseman was already something of a phenom by the time she launched her webcomic Heartstopper in 2016. The author had published her first book, the YA novel Solitaire, two years earlier, at age 19, and two novellas in 2015.
Among the characters in Solitaire were Nick Nelson and Charlie Spring, two queer teenage boys who then anchored Oseman’s 2015 e-novellas, Nick and Charlie and This Winter. But the author and illustrator wasn’t done with them. The two became the focus of Heartstopper, a popular webcomic that explored the relationship between them.
Heartstopper: Volume 1 was published in the U.K. in 2019 and in the U.S. in 2020 to positive reviews from critics, including one from Kirkus praising it as “an adorable diary of love’s gut punches.” Four more volumes followed, as did a Netflix series adaptation starring Kit Connor and Joe Locke that premiered in 2022.
The first Heartstopper volume was initially published in a limited-edition crowdsourced run, highlighting the changing face of publishing and helping to cement the webcomic as an important genre in its own right.
But more importantly, the success of the Heartstopper books proved that young audiences were hungry for realistic LGBTQ+ love stories that focused not just on the trials of being queer in a homophobic world but also on the joy of finding love. The novels and series inspired readers and viewers to come out of the closet and to celebrate their own triumphs—a powerful legacy for an author who only recently turned 30.
Michael Schaub is a contributing writer.
