Encore's webtoon cover note
Encore!
is a high school romance webcomic written by Miles Burkes. It began publication in 2020, and is currently ongoing. It follows Clay Noguchi and Aron Santos, former childhood friends who have been estranged ever since a falling out in middle school. After being placed in the same theater class their senior year they begin to reconnect, while struggling to confront the issues that caused them to grow apart in the first place.
Encore contains examples of:
- All Gays Love Theater: The framing device of the comic is Clay and Aron reconnecting in a high school theater class and there is a lot of focus given to Clay and Aron's individual relation to the art form and how it connects to their falling out. It is also what gives the comic its name, being that an encore refers to doing the performance again and the story is about them trying to fix their once close friendship. Most importantly, they're both gay.
- Amicable Exes: Aron and Erica, once Aron comes out to her as gay they have a very healthy breakup and continue to hang out as friends.
- Art Evolution: While the current art style is still recognizable as the one the comic started with, the character's eyes have noticeably gotten a lot smaller and overall have more realistic proportions.
- Big Damn Kiss: Clay and Aron finally kiss in Aron's pool, after confessing their love for each other earlier that night at the winter formal.
- Cast Full of Gay: The protagonist Clay is a gay trans man, and everyone in his friend group is also lgbt of some variety. As the story goes on the only two "straight" characters also realize they're queer.
- Childhood Friends: Clay and Aron were completely inseparable as children, but as they grew up Aron made new friends and stopped hanging out with him. There are many flashback scenes in the comic to their relationship when they were young, contrasting their strained relationship in the present.
- Childhood Friend Romance: As Aron comes back into his life Clay begins to fall for him, despite knowing nothing will ever come of it due to Aron having a girlfriend. Lucky for Clay, Aron may not be as straight as he thinks.
- Color-Coded Characters: Each character has an associated color, with Clay being orange, Aron being green, Quinn being light blue, Hana being pink, Alex being red, and Erica being violet.
- Dance of Romance: Clay and Aron dance at Homecoming, despite Aron's girlfriend Erica being less than 20 feet away.
- Ferris Wheel Date Moment: Clay and Aron go on a Ferris wheel together, and Aron tries to confess his feelings for Clay but chickens out at the last moment.
- Former Friends Photo: The comic opens with a montage of photos of Clay and Aron from their childhood. It then cuts to them as teenagers, with Clay glaring at Aron in disgust and complaining about him to Alex, immediately showing their falling out.
- Light Feminine and Dark Feminine: Hana and Erica once they become friends.
- Middle School Is Miserable: Middle School is when Clay and Aron stopped being friends. This was due to Aron succumbing to peer pressure and trying to fit in, something Clay never cared about.
- Official Couple: Quinn and Hana, they started dating several years before the start of the comic.
- Webcomic Time: The comic has been going for several years, but the story just spans the character's senior year of high school.
- We Used to Be Friends: Clay and Aron were once best friends, but at the start of the comic they aren't even on speaking terms. This extends to the rest of Clay's friend group, the majority of which were also ditched by him and are skeptical when he starts trying to hang out with them again.
