Les Normaux: Magic, Desire, and the Radical Ordinary

There's something subversive about a world where the supernatural becomes mundane, where a vampire can fumble through texting a crush, where magic itself cannot shield you from parental rejection. Janine Janssen's Les Normaux—now collected in print after captivating global Webtoon audiences—understands that queerness requires no metaphorical stand-ins.

Sébastien, a young sorcerer fleeing familial rejection of both his magical abilities and his sexuality, attempts to build an authentic life at magic university in an alternate metropolis pulsing with Parisian energy. An impulsive kiss with Elia, the attractive vampire heir to a fashion empire, leads to the discovery that they're neighbours—and to that trembling romantic premise: proximity, possibility, and agonizing uncertainty.

Janssen's work is superb in its refusal to let magic do metaphorical heavy lifting. These characters are unambiguously, unapologetically queer. Sébastien's coming out is about his actual queerness and isn't coded through his magical powers, with magic serving as an additional dimension of othering that our Dear Readers will recognize. This doubling of marginalization is authentic; many of us know what it's like when families reject multiple facets of who we are.

The slow-burn romance unfolds with delightful sweetness, but Les Normaux shines with its constellation of secondary characters—a chosen family as diverse as any queer community should be. Various supernatural beings mirror the beautiful multiplicity of gender expressions, sexual orientations, and relationship configurations, creating a world where diversity isn't tokenistic but essential to its architecture.

The artwork by Janssen and S. Al Sabado keeps the attention: lush, saturated with colour, throbbing with emotional nuance. This isn't dark, brooding vampire aesthetic but something rococo, colourful, rich —a celebration of the spectacular ordinariness of queer joy in the everyday.

For those navigating disorienting queer young adulthood, Les Normaux offers recognition. It speaks to anyone who has constructed a life from scratch when the original blueprint proved uninhabitable, who understands that starting over is courage, that family is often the people you choose.

The narrative achieves that delicate balance between levity and depth, finding space for both giddy romantic comedy and genuine vulnerability. There's a light honest tenderness in how it portrays becoming—learning to inhabit your desires, your queerness, without apology.

Les Normaux reminds us that representation matters in texture and specificity, in the granular details of how queer lives are actually lived. It's a love letter to messy beginnings, to finding your people, to the radical act of believing you deserve softness and romance. And a delight to just look at, the artwork flows in a sensual way.

Essential reading for anyone who believes in queer storytelling's transformative possibilities—not stories where queerness is tragic or metaphorical, but stories where it simply is, where being normal means being exactly, magnificently yourself.

Hardback: Volume 1 is available now, with Volume 2 out £22 - January 15th, for more info or to order see the publishers website here: