Friday Webcomic Recs: A little more serious now

I rec a lot of lighthearted comedies, but these more somber series are worth reading too.

Fantasy with serious issues:

Kochab – A lost skier trying to survive a snowy wilderness and find her way back to her village stumbles across and awakens a fire spirit trying to fix the home that she’s let fall apart around her. Complete!

Fairmeadow – Wayward Orcish soldier Goma finds herself in a commune of pacifists deep in the Cascadian wilderness. Isolation has allowed the commune to thrive in the shadow of a century-long war, but Goma’s arrival brings troubling reminders of the world outside… Ongoing.

Just serious reality:

fresh meat – A girl with clinical depression and her first experience with a psychiatric hospital. (Yes, they’re anthros. It’s realistic anyway.) Complete!

what happens next – A constellation of extremely-online young people grapple with various abuses and traumas, up to and including an actual murder, while their main social outlets are the woefully-unprepared communities of true-crime podcasting and Tumblr. Ongoing.

Joe vs Elan School – Graphic memoir about the artist being kidnapped into an abusive, culty “school” that’s typical of the “troubled teen industry”, how he got through it, and all the traumatic fallout it left in his life. Complete!