Stjepan Šejić was born on 27 November 1981, a Croatian comic-book writer and artist. He was born in Vinkovci and is based in Crikvenica. His wife, Linda Lukšić Šejić, is a Croatian artist too. Before the creator-owned work, the mainstream résumé was already solid: long runs at Top Cow on Witchblade, Aphrodite IX, and The Darkness. What makes him hard to skip in lesbian BDSM comics is the work he owns. For readers who know rope and power exchange, the title is Sunstone, a webcomic that became a graphic novel. It draws women negotiating dominance, submission, friendship, and love, with humor and with sex written straight.
He started as a colorist, painting covers over Tyler Kirkham’s pencils. Italian comics were an early influence, and so were Marc Silvestri and Michael Turner. A Top Cow Witchblade pushed his style somewhere else. In 2007 he signed to draw Witchblade from issue 116 through issue 150. Once that run was finished, it was treated as the longest stretch by a single artist on the series, about four years. He also drew the Witchblade miniseries First Born and Broken Trinity, and covers for The Darkness. During that industrial training he freelanced for smaller houses, including Arcana Studio and Dynamite Entertainment, and he did character models and artbook work for the video game Serious Sam 3: BFE (2011). Superhero bodies, glossy covers, and the stamina for a long series later went into the books he owns.
Sunstone, Death Vigil, Fine Print
As writer-artist he has three ongoing pillars: Sunstone, from 2011; Death Vigil, from 2014; and Fine Print, from 2021. Sunstone is what put him in the middle of the BDSM media map. Partners and friends try dominance, submission, toys, negotiated limits, jealousy, and the gossip of a scene. One page can be raw and tender. Mainstream comics often use leather as a costume. Sunstone writes kink as a technology inside a relationship. Death Vigil and Fine Print use the same narrative muscle on the supernatural and on fae contracts. Readers who arrived for Sunstone often stay for the rest of the Shiniez-era catalog.
Before Sunstone, mainstream North American comics were quicker to offer a leather look than to keep negotiated lesbian D/s going as character drama. Šejić’s series started as a webcomic under the Shiniez name and was later collected in print. The women talk about limits, joke about toys, fail at communication, and try again. Explicit sex plus relationship comedy is why BDSM readers hand it to newcomers who are tired of porn with nobody in it and tired of romance that does not know kink. It is not a clinical diagram. The pictures are drawn as desire, with anatomy and light that still show the Top Cow training.
Leaving work-for-hire
The interior credits are a wide commercial list. On top of the long Witchblade association — some listings break it into clusters, #105–107, #116–138, #140–141, and #144–145, while another account calls the run #116 through #150 — they include Angelus #1–6, Aphrodite IX (2013), Artifacts #0–25, Rat Queens #9–10, Ravine (2013–2014), Arcana’s Kade: Sun of Perdition #1–4, and Radical’s Aladdin: Legacy Of The Lost #2–3. Covers run across Arcana, DC, Dynamite, Image/Top Cow, Marvel, Radical, and Zenescope, among them Batman: Arkham Knight—Genesis, Aquaman, Nightwing, Suicide Squad, and Secret Invasion: Inhumans.
Leather and rope readers do not file him as “the Witchblade guy who also drew some kink.” He is one of the few mainstream-trained artists who committed to long, character-driven lesbian BDSM comics and walked away from work-for-hire to protect that focus. In 2020 he announced he was leaving mainstream assignments and putting the time back into projects he owns. Readers who already cared read that as a values statement: creator-owned kink and fantasy over chasing issue counts on corporate books. It lines up with the earlier choice, dropping a law-school path for comics. Craft over the safer prestige, twice. For people who already keep Sunstone, Death Vigil, and Fine Print, the exit made those books louder. Official and fan portals have used the names Nebezial and Shiniez for the webcomic years. The story that matters can still be two women, a harness, and what they actually want.
