"I'm a bit of a blue-collar worker. But if you want glamour? If you want bliss and magic? Well, I guess we could work something out!"
— Merryl Alaris
Lauren Thomas believed she had everything, only to find her life fall into a downward spiral, having ditched the one guy that could make her happy. After a failed attempt to win him back, Lauren happens upon a woman.
It turns out that succubi are real, a remnant of The Old Gods to help them keep their immortality in an era that no longer believes in them. Lauren agrees to make a pact with these gods of desire, only to find out that she has unwittingly become the center of a competition between these divine beings.
Fine Print is an Erotic-Urban Fantasy comic series by Stjepan Šejić and published by Image Comics and Top Cow Productions.
This comic provides examples of the following tropes:
- Animal Motif: Cubi are associated with Butterflies, having massive butterfly wings and often heralded by a kaleidoscope of them.
- Bargain with Heaven: Since cubi are a type of god and not a demon, a human's compact with them is closer to this, exchanging great sex in return for having their energy fed on to make the cubi's food.
- Be Careful What You Wish For: In her backstory Lauren broke away from her high school love Matthew for a successful modeling career, noting amongst the other reasons the ambition that awoke within her after being known as just the plain or outright ugly girl in her youth. By the time the story starts Lauren is now deeply unhappy with her life and success, with her failed attempt to apologize and reconnect with Matthew (though it's clear later that he isn't entirely over her either) providing the heartbreak that helps push her down the path into the world of Cubi.
- Boyish Short Hair: Sam (or Samantha) Sawyer, Lauren's friend who she has sex with sometimes, has hers cut short. She's otherwise pretty femme though.
- Crossover Cosmology: While the story takes place in a world once ruled by the gods of Classical Mythology, nowadays what remains of The Old Gods have been forced to adapt, most of them being the very angelic Cupids and demon-like Succubi and Incubi. One of the Cubi families are the Morningstars, Lucifer being its patriarch, and Bauphette Alaris, one of the higher-ranking Arcubi and mother to Merryl, turns out to have once been none other than Alecto, one of the three Furies.
- Cthulhumanoid: While a cubi's default form is the classic Hot as Hell look, their true forms are not so pedestrian, adding scales and various other tails that look like tentacles at first glance. They usually hide this form from humans because the human mind was not equipped to handle gazing upon it, resulting in things from bleeding from their eyes to spontaneous combustion.
- Everybody Has Lots of Sex: The Cubi and Cupids, along with human Lauren, all have frequent (often explicit) sex (making up most characters in the comic).
- Everyone Is Bi: Both Cupids and Cubi are polymorphic in nature and they can shift between sexes at will, so their sexual preference is just as fluid. The same applies to the protagonist Lauren Thomas, who's attracted to both men and women, including having threesomes. All these make up most of the characters.
- Fallen Cupid:
- Succubi and Incubi are "cousins" to cupids who's job is to collect Lust in humans, using it to cultivate Eternal Ambrosia to prolong their immortality.
- If they so choose, cupids can swap their "divine essence" and become succubi/incubi.
- Fantastic Arousal: A cubi's tail is an erogenous zone and it's rather sensitive, as Lauren finds out when she grabs hold of Merryl's tail. It's implied that this is because this is where they store raw, primordial desire that they can inject into others, not unlike the venom in a scorpion's stinger.
- Fantastic Drug: Love and Lust are considered this to Cubi and Cupids respectively, imbibing in such feels compared to shooting up heroin. Arcubi have made it a rule to the other cubi not to do so because of how addictive it can be.
- Fantastic Racism: Natural-born cubi don't seem to have much respect for cupids who become cubi by choice.
- Fantastic Slur: Being called demons (even though they're divided into incubi or succubi) is hugely offensive to Cubi.
- Forbidden Fruit: Part of the summon ritual involves eating a fruit that looks like a golden apple.
- Forced Transformation: When cubi feel genuine love, their horns become gold-tipped similar to a cupid's halo. Since love is taboo to cubi, this can make things very difficult for them. When a cupid feels Lust (or at least desire injected from a cubi's tale), they spontaneously grow horns similar to a cubi's halo. Bauphette calls it the "Crown of Eros", and she does not like it when it happens.
- A Form You Are Comfortable With: A cubi's true form can get rather Lovecraftian and have adverse effects on humans who see them, so they cover it in layers of Glamour to interact with people properly. When a person sees past their glamour and sees cupids or cubi under their human disguises, this usually means that they are ideal candidates for making deals. When Merryl accidentally shows her divinity to Lauren, she becomes genuinely worried that she would bleed from her eyes (which eventually does happen) and spontaneously combust, questioning if she is a demigod when it doesn't happen right away.
- Friends with Benefits: Lauren's best friend and Living Emotional Crutch Samantha Sawyer is also her on-again, off-again lover. Having had sex multiple times throughout the years (both drunk and sober), their relationship doesn't go any deeper than that.
- Gods Need Prayer Badly: Gods keep themselves immortal through Eternal Ambrosia, growing it through human worship. Since people don't worship the Olympians in modern times, they had adapted to cultivating it in individual people, cubi and cupids having been created for this very purpose.
- The Immodest Orgasm:
- When Heureca tries to hold in her orgasm during the "ritual of crowning", it ends in a bright pink explosion that leaves a pink, geode-like crater.
- Lauren screams in pleasure when Merryl has sex with her, as it's the best she's ever had (the latter being a Sex Goddess, this isn't too surprising). Other sex scenes earlier also imply that she's loud generally when climaxing.
- Instant Seduction: Cubi, being sex gods, are naturally able to do this with many people (though not all-its implied that the exceptions are asexuals). They can also take other forms to appear however a person likes.
- Interspecies Romance: Cubi and Cupids are shown in relationships. Meanwhile, Cubi commonly offer to give humans the best sex of their lives, and one is shown doing so.
- Lipstick Lesbian: The bi/pansexual and lesbian woman (or female-presenting Cubi as well) favor long hair while often wearing blouses, skirts, dresses or almost nothing. Samantha (Sam) is a partial exception, her Tomboyish Name with Boyish Short Hair being slightly more butch, but she otherwise usually wears feminine clothing too and isn't masculine.
- Love Goddess: The Cupids, who spread love by firing golden arrows into humans which cause love (they can also be used on Cubi, but it causes pleasure instead).
- Love Is a Crime: It's considered taboo for succubi and incubi to feel or express love because it can become addictive to their kind. Even familial love is off-limits, preferring to show pride or respect.
- Making Love in All the Wrong Places: Lauren has sex with people in locales other than the bedroom more than once, most notably wherever she does it with Merryl.
- Male Frontal Nudity: Several of the physically male-presenting Cupids and Cubi are shown entirely nude, including with erect penises having sex (sometimes together).
- Nonhuman Nonbinary: Most of the Cubi and Cupids don't seem to have a set gender, moving between male or female forms as they like with no signs it discomforts them.
- The Nth Doctor: As worship for the gods faded away, some of the gods took on new forms and identities in order to adapt. For example, the two matriarch/patriarch arcubi of the Alaris Family were once known as Alecto of the Furies and Charon (The Ferryman).
- Our Angels Are Different: Both Cupids and Cubi are races of lesser-gods descended from Eros, their purpose to cultivate certain emotions (love and lust respectively) and use it to grow Eternal Ambrosia, allowing the gods to remain immortal in an era devoid of worship. While there is some Fantastic Racism between them, it's portrayed more as a form of Interservice Rivalry and
interracial relationships tend to happen. - Polyamory: Lauren is the submissive “third” to a man and woman (a married couple) for a time while doing BDSM with them. She's sad when they break things off and move on.
- Prehensile Tail: A cubi's tail can function as a dextrous third limb.
- Really Gets Around: Lauren has lots of casual sex to assuage her sadness, and is shown in many different encounters. All the Cubi are promiscuous as well, naturally, with providing sex to humans being their literal job. They also have group sex with each other and Cupids.
- Sex for Services: The Cubi do this, offering humans the best sex ever for their sexual energy, which is used to grow food they need.
- Sex for Solace: Lauren has lots of casual sex to offset her depression and loneliness. This doesn't work.
- Sex God: What the Cubi are really, as a species (they hate being called demons). They offer humans the best sex in their life for around a year (the golden contract) to gain sexual energy the Cubi need for creating their food in return. Lauren's reaction to having sex with Merryl as a test to prove it's true indicates they can definitely deliver. Given they're minor literal gods it's explicitly a supernatural gift they have.
- Sex Shifter: All the Cubi and Cupids can instantly change their sexes as they'd like.
- Stripperific: All of the Cubi outfits (fittingly as they're basically the lust spirits) show almost everything, with Navel-Deep Neckline being a common feature. One's goes even further, with nipple clamps and her breasts otherwise shown naked.
- Succubi and Incubi: Cubi are not demons (in fact they consider it offensive), but instead a race of lesser gods descended from Eros, their purpose to cultivate Lust in humans and use it to prolong their lives.
- Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: Having impulsively breached her modeling contract to go back to the U.S and reconnect with Matthew, then spending the three months after depressed in a hotel room, Lauren lampshades that she blew through a lot of her savings and had ruined her reputation in the professional modeling world. Fortunately, Sam introduces her to the world of online modeling and cosplay as well as letting Lauren move in with her for a time.
- Threeway Sex: Lauren is shown having an explicit threesome with a man and woman during one of her many hookups.
- Think Unsexy Thoughts: This is discussed and also practiced by characters for delaying arousal.
- Title Drop: After Merryl offers her the golden contract, Lauren wants to know about the fine print, i.e. the catch.
- Vapor Wear: A standard feature of Cubi outfits. When they even have anything covering them, it's seethrough quite frequently.
- The 'Verse: The comic shares a universe with other works by Stjepan Šejić and Linda Luksic Sejic.
- The Underworld from Punderworld has long since been discontinued as an afterlife and is now used for what is essentially a drug-den/sex-club for Cubi and Cupids partaking in Love and Lust, Hades doing this out of friendship he had with Eros.
- When Lauren goes out to the BDSM club, various characters from Sunstone are seen socializing in the background.
- Bauphette and Charon would routinely elope in the Shimmerwoods.
- Wall Bang Her: Sam is shown eating out Laurel against a wall in one case.
