Clara & The Devil Vol. 1
Clara & The Devil Vol. 1 Writer: Olivie Blake
Artist: Little Chimura
Publisher: 23rd St.
Publication Date: May 2026
One of the grandest traditions in comics is the early story hook, from explosions to murders to subtler things like the set-up of a patient mystery. Clara & The Devil understands this and deploys it well, perhaps better than any comic book story in recent memory, wasting absolutely no time in starting the engine that will rapidly power readers through this lyrical, steamy, and compulsively readable graphic novel.
What most people don’t realize about the devil is that he isn’t trying to hide.
That’s the first and only line on page one, and from there the book launches into a mysterious sequence in which the devil approaches our first-person narrator to apply for a library card (she is a teen librarian). It’s a bold and direct beginning, loaded with swagger, and it sets a tone that carries on throughout the rest of the book.
This marks the comics debut for writer Olivie Blake, although you wouldn’t know it. Blake is perhaps best known for the fantast novel, The Atlas Six, a New York Times best-seller. And she is joined on Clara & The Devil by artist Little Chmura, who describes herself as “mostly focused on portraits” on her website. This is not the duo’s first collaboration, with Chmura having done illustrations for Atlas Six, and there’s certainly a familiarity to their collaboration in these pages.
On its surface, Clara and the Devil is a story about teens between phases in life, managing relationships, hurtling towards futures, and discovering sex. We have a protagonist who works in a library in a smalltown, and she has a boyfriend who is respectful if a bit seemingly disinterested. And she has a best friend who might be more than a friend. And then the devil shows up, gets a library card, and starts tempting them all.
This is all makes for a fantastic canvas, and the creative team uses it so well. There’s such a great synergy to the way Blake’s playful, almost-bouncy scripting gels with Chmura’s artwork, knowing when to guide the reader with words and when to keep the writing spare, letting Chmura explode the underlying fantasy elements of this narrative into stunning two-page spreads.
From the opening hook, Clara & The Devil feels engaging and in control, but it also quickly starts to feel volatile, in the sense that one never quite knows what’s waiting around the page turn. Will the devil be back to lean, enticingly on a library shelf with some pithy remark he shouldn’t know? Will the narrator turn inward, with Chmura delivering more stunning, wavy art that perfectly captures her mood? The team can and does do all that and more in this book. And they also bring it all together in a story with momentum, a satisfying arc, and an absolutely perfect ending, with a hook that’s almost as grabby as the one at the start.
Overall, Clara and the Devil Vol 1 is an ethereal and perfectly-told comics story, one that tows the edge of erotic, but does so with purpose to convey the whirlwind of feelings that mark what feel like the most definitive moments of our lives in our mid to late teens. And it might just be your favorite guilty temptation this summer.
Clara and the Devil Vol 1 is available now via 23rd Street
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