A sensitive prince with a passion for poetry and tailoring sits alone in a garden built with unearned wealth. A few miles south, a man is imprisoned by the regime, ripped from a home he no longer recognizes. Their paths will cross and their lives will become intertwined in ways that no one could predict. A story steeped in Iranian culture and brought to life in vivid color.

Saffron is a soon-to-be 336 page graphic novel, available online or in print.

Author notes

Looking back, I can see how many mistakes I've made throughout this project. It was a challenge to wrangle 2023 me, 2024 me, and 2025 me into agreeing on where the story should go. At the same time, I don't want to think of it as a practice run, an experiment, or a starting point. I want it to be a standalone work worthy of respect, as imperfect as it may be. My life is always going to bleed into my work, and vice versa. Saffron is a little bit about being queer and Persian, a little bit about being a sensitive person in a world not made for you, and a little bit about how people can wake up to injustices. Feminine men that are not any less manly, who aren't written off to the side and have complex inner lives. Iranian-coded people who aren't one-sided stereotypes.

I love Marin because he's so close to my own heart. He cries about everything, he's overemotional, his sadness goes deep and his excitement overflows. Life overwhelms him. The other people in his life don't quite know how to handle him, but Idris does.

I didn't have an overarching, grand thesis or theme in mind. It's just a snapshot of a semi-historical place in time stuffed with characters that are living vivid lives. To be honest, when I flip through all of my proof copies, my first thought is, “not good enough.” That has been the unfortunate theme throughout every volume, and I'm certain that will carry over into the next. At the same time, it does exist— at the bare minimum, better than nonexistence. The fate of most comics is indefinite hiatus or permanent cancellation. Somehow, my comic escaped this fate. I have another career, and I've made this all for free. I'm one of the randomly selected artists that has an otherworldly motivation to draw and make silly things no matter how bad the other side of the brain thinks they are. That's how you get four volumes of Saffron. I've wanted to give up so many times over the course of this project, but something kept me going. Maybe it was my characters wanting their story to be finished and put to rest. They're like ghosts whose souls can't be free until their business is done. I don't mind them haunting me for a little while longer.