Archive feature, first published 2018-05-07.
Icarus and the Sun is a webcomic by the Brazilian artist Gabriel Picolo that turns the ancient Greek myth into a modern love story. Icarus is a young man with dark, dripping wings; the Sun is a girl made of fire, with long flaming hair. They fall for each other, and the closer they get, the more he melts. Picolo has described the story as a way of using Icarus's wax wings as a metaphor for a relationship that hurts both people.
The comic began as a quick drawing in 2014 and grew, piece by piece, on Picolo's Instagram from 2016 onwards. He shared it out of order, as moments and fragments rather than a finished book, and it gathered a very large following. The pages below are a selection of those highlights, followed by the original myth and what happened to the project next.
The original myth of Icarus
In Greek mythology, Icarus was the son of Daedalus, the master craftsman who built the labyrinth for King Minos of Crete. When Minos imprisoned them, Daedalus made two pairs of wings from feathers held together with beeswax. He warned his son not to fly too low, where the sea spray would weigh the feathers down, or too high, where the sun would melt the wax. Icarus soared upward anyway, the wax melted, and he fell into the sea near the island now called Icaria, in the waters known as the Icarian Sea.
The best-known ancient versions come from Ovid's Metamorphoses and the Bibliotheca attributed to Apollodorus. The story gave English the phrase "flying too close to the sun", and it is usually read as a warning against over-ambition. Picolo keeps the danger but changes the reason: Icarus does not rise out of pride, but out of love.
Who Gabriel Picolo is
Picolo is a Brazilian illustrator who, after leaving a college course, committed to posting one drawing a day throughout 2014. His versions of DC Comics' Teen Titans as ordinary teenagers went viral in 2016 and 2017, which led to the graphic novels Teen Titans: Raven and Teen Titans: Beast Boy with writer Kami Garcia, both bestsellers. Icarus and the Sun is his own original story, with a warm, painterly style that many readers compare to Studio Ghibli and manga. You can follow him on Instagram.
The comic: meeting and falling in love
The story opens in a dark forest at night. A voice asks why the other has come, and the answer is simply to think, about nothing in particular. It is a quiet start for a story that will be all about fire.
Titled "Chapter 1: Bad Habit", this page shows two characters talking by a glowing figure in the woods. One says they would rather have nothing on their mind for a change, setting up the theme of overthinking that runs through the comic.
A ribbon of flame reaches into a man's chest and opens a small door where his heart should be. The image shows love as something that gets inside you and is hard to shut out again.
A pale figure begs someone to stay, while a winged figure and a fiery girl embrace. Picolo hints early that this is a triangle of feelings, not just a simple romance.
A shooting star turns out to be bad news: a falling crow, and a banner asking whether someone is really leaving for "him". The night sky becomes a stage for jealousy and loss.
Among prickly pear cacti in the desert, Icarus and the Sun hold each other, with a sunflower between them. Cacti and sunflowers become recurring symbols in the series.
She asks why he does not want her to be his girlfriend, and he answers that things will go wrong and he will hurt her, because that is what always happens. It is the central fear of the whole comic.
He tells her he loves her "to the moon and back"; she hushes him. The warm orange palette shows how her light changes everything around her.
They plan to pack everything and drive towards the distant hills by the light of the full moon. "That's the stupidest, most reckless thing I've ever heard," one says, before agreeing anyway.
A close embrace, her flames wrapping around him and his wings dripping like melting wax. This image is one of the clearest visual links to the myth.
In a room full of potted cacti, he explains that he has named each plant after one of his fears and inner demons, such as "Lonely", "Anxious" and "Overthinker". It is a gentle, funny way to talk about mental health.
"To burn for someone is to melt in the process," reads the text beside this kiss. It sums up Picolo's twist on the myth in one line.
We learn that he always felt the need to put things in order and give names to what exists, so he began collecting facts about her. It shows how he tries to understand love by controlling it.
Three panels: a messy kitchen, a shelf of jars and their bodies wrapped in flame, with the words that he has tied himself more tightly to her with each embrace.
Sketches and quieter moments
A pencil and watercolour sketch: the Sun lying on a sofa while small flames flicker along it. Picolo often shared rough sketchbook pages as well as finished art.
A sketchbook drawing of the couple kissing, with candles burning around them. The coloured pencil lying beside the page reminds us these were drawn by hand.
He sits with great grey wings spread on a couch, while she lies glowing on his lap. The contrast between his grey and her gold is the visual key of the series.
Four panels of the couple asleep: first together, then apart, then her alone with her fire fading to pale pink. A whole break-up told without a single word.
"Are you afraid of love, or afraid of not being loved back?" She holds him against her chest beneath his huge dark wings. The question is aimed as much at readers as at the characters.
A pencil sketch in which they embrace while he melts into a puddle, with the words "I love you" and "despite the warning signs". It shows the danger he has chosen to ignore.
An open sketchbook with a two-page spread suggesting that maybe they were just not meant to be. Even the rough versions carry the story's sadness.
The break-up and the aftermath
The longest page in the set: "We need to talk." He tells her he hoped she would fix the mess he was in, but realised she loved a version of him without those problems. He says he is not her problem to solve, and that he is leaving until he can make peace with himself.
Her grief is drawn in five panels named after the familiar stages: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. The "five stages" come from Elisabeth Kübler-Ross's 1969 book on death and dying; psychologists today see grief as far less orderly.
She sits hugging her knees, surrounded by burning trees. "If all else fails, use fire," says the caption, an honest look at how anger can take over after a break-up.
"Post-break up runaway": he runs through a burning forest while her giant figure looms above in the sky. It is a striking image of trying to escape memories that are everywhere.
He looks at himself in a bathroom mirror and asks if it still hurts, while a pale winged reflection looks back. Healing in this comic is slow and uncertain.
She says she wants to fall asleep and wake up knowing her heart is safe, and that she only wants to love and be loved back. Small fox-like creatures gather around her.
Alone in a swirling room, she draws constellations around a glowing heart while someone asks, "May I come in?" Picolo uses the stars to show her trying to make sense of things.
Her little fox companions tell her he should not come in and remind her he left. She asks for anything but silence, and finally agrees.
"Look at yourself... Why are you here?" A tense reunion, drawn in soft, foggy colours.
He admits he was going through a lot and that living without her hurts twice as much, says sorry and asks if they can start over. Her answer, in the last panel, is a single word: no.
Why the comic connected with readers, and what happened next
The comic takes a myth about ambition and turns it into a story about anxiety, self-worth and the idea that someone else can fix you. The final "no" is what makes it memorable. It does not punish either character; it suggests that some people have to heal on their own before love can work, a message that many readers found more honest than a fairy-tale ending.
The project kept growing after these pages were first shared. In 2018 Picolo said he hoped to publish a full graphic novel, and a later crowdfunding campaign for the book on Indiegogo raised about 596,000 US dollars, one of the most successful comics campaigns on the platform. For similar romantic art, see Flowsofly's Expressive Drawings of Intimacy and the related list below.
Sources: Art by Gabriel Picolo (Instagram); Nerdist: How Gabriel Picolo Went from Fan Artist to NYT Bestseller; Beautiful Bizarre interview with Gabriel Picolo; Wikipedia: Icarus.
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