Love, Joolz by Jules Rivera is a slice-of-life comic centering the badass eponymous protagonist. She skates, she doesn’t take shit from the white men in power, and for better or worse, now she’s dealing with the same apocalyptic nightmare all of us in the United States wake up to each and every morning.

Love, Joolz has been a venue for Rivera to share her own stories. One of the earliest runs of the comic tells a very personal narrative about why she was forced to leave an engineering career at Northrop Grumman.

In more recent strips, Love, Joolz has tackled current events like the Black Lives Matter protests, the ongoing pandemic, and the existential threat of white terrorism. Sometimes these adventures are more grounded, depicting encounters with mask-defying white supremacists while skateboarding, and other times they are more fanciful, as when Joolz contacts the Justice League to offer them some pandemic advice.

Love, Joolz
In Love, Joolz, the surreal can sometimes be expected.

In fact, the strip has even pivoted to feature Rivera’s “Apocalypse Garden,” a reference to the fact that thanks to COVID-19, many of us have had our social circles reduced to the potted plants in our apartments. Not only is this feature extremely relatable, but Rivera also goes to great lengths to share actual gardening knowledge and protips with the reader (especially valuable considering the Bronx Aloe Vera, a family of succulents that Rivera’s family has been caring for across generations, decades, and even state lines).

And if all this isn’t enough, Love, Joolz has been posted on Webtoon since July 2018, with over two hundred episodes already available, so you can while away a few apocalyptic days inside catching up on the backlog!

You can read Love, Joolz on Webtoon, learn more about Rivera’s art on her website, and if you’d like to directly support her work, consider donating to her Patreon (which can also gain you access to Flaming Taco Truck en Fuego, the pulp novel Rivera is currently writing).