The Spring 2025 K-Comics Guide

Murderous Lewellyn's Candlelit Dinner

What's It About? 

A string of murders has left the residents of Ira Street feeling uneasy….although that's none of Shavonne's business. The penniless author is too busy trying to secure his next paycheck to pay much attention to such matters—well, that and figuring out what the deal is with his strange new neighbor, Lewellyn, a young and handsome man who spends his days peeling onions on the stairs right outside Shavonne's apartment. Shavonne tries not to concern himself, but when he makes a gruesome discovery during a candlelit dinner at Lewellyn's place, both his neighbor's eccentricities and the murders plaguing the community become harder to ignore…

Murderous Lewellyn's Candlelit Dinner has a story by 0L Hanhun and art by MUK_BU. It is based on a work by Sumnagi. English translation by Micah Kim. Lettering by Dietrich Premier. Published by Ize Press (May 20, 2025). Rated T+.

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Is It Worth Reading?

Lauren Orsini
Rating:

Would you know if the man you were dating was secretly a murderer? Better question: what if you knew for sure he was? In Murderous Llewellyn's Candlelit Dinner, broke writer Shavonne finds himself alternately enamored with and terrified of his next door neighbor Llewellyn. It's an oddball romance taken to the extreme—one of the romantic leads isn't just eccentric, he's certifiable. Both romantic tension and horror-movie unease make for an unsettling narrative that offsets its typical pretty-boy character designs. But between its unusual fantasy setting and the killer's too obvious, single-minded obsession with the main character mean it doesn't shine as brightly as it could among its contemporaries in the ever-expanding serial killer romance genre.

I assume romances in which one character is a confirmed serial killer are popular for the same reason true crime is. People want to self-insert into a thriller and explore how they might survive a dangerous situation, risk-free. And where would the stakes be higher than in an intimate relationship with a serial killer, where it'd be impossible to tell which would win out: his deadly impulses or his desire for the MC? In this BL story, Shavonne is our reader-insert character, an average Joe who is too poor to move out of the sketchiest part of town, and what's more, there's been a string of unexplained murders right nearby. As Shavonne attempts to find steady work in this troubling locale, he's got two other problems: a stalker leaving notes on his door, and an overly friendly neighbor peeling onions on the landing in front of his apartment. You don't need to be a homicide detective to figure out if the murderer, the stalker, and the neighbor are all the same. Llewellyn is not a subtle man; at one point, he writes to Shavonne under the name “Newell Y. L.” All smiles and good looks with a sinister edge, he is an idealized version of the sexy killer without anything mysterious or alluring about him.

Reading Murderous Llewellyn's Candlelit Dinner put me in mind of perhaps the most infamous BL K-Comic about serial killers, Killing Stalking. Whether you loved or hated that controversial story, you can't deny the electric tension brought forth by the two mentally unstable romantic leads, both of whom proved themselves to be capable of anything except controlling their impulses. This story feels like a more sanitized version of the serial killer romance trope because, as much as Shavonne wants to escape the situation, his reaction is more like visceral disgust than anything resembling fear. Even he can sense that he has nothing to be afraid of from Llewellyn, undercutting any real tension. His over-the-top kindness makes it clear that whatever else Llewellyn is capable of, he's not going to kill Shavonne. Without that crucial element, this trope falls a bit flat.

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