After boy met boy in a crowdfunded graphic novel set in a British grammar school in 2018, hearts began to flutter and tills started to ring around the world. This week, the second season of Alice Oseman’s Heartstopper landed on Netflix. In December, the author, who scripted the TV adaptation of her winsomely affirmative queer love story, will publish the fifth book in the series.
Though many people above a certain age may be unaware of it, Heartstopper is a cultural powerhouse. Popularised through social media channels, it helped to keep bookshops afloat through, and after, the pandemic, while spreading a feelgood spirit among its young, multimedia-savvy, readers, to whom it has sold 8m copies. Whether it would have become so huge in happier times is a moot point. But the phenomenon casts a revealing light on rapidly changing relationships both in the real world and in the interlinked media industries that represent it.
