Undertale Comics Guide

Undertale Comics Guide

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Undertale has one of the most in-depth universes in the gaming sphere, with some of the most potential to tell different stories I’ve ever seen in a video game. In addition, there is a multitude of official products and posts that expand on this universe in exciting ways.

Unfortunately, no official comic series exists for Undertale. However, if you’re craving some excellent fusion of art and story, the fans have your back, as well as a few official books and series that aren’t necessarily comic books. So, if you need some reading material, this Undertale Comics guide is for you.

Undertale: Shape Your Destiny Beneath the Surface | GOG
Undertale: Shape Your Destiny Beneath the Surface | GOG

Embark on an unforgettable journey through the underground world of Undertale, where every choice you make shapes the fate of monsters and humans alike. With its charming retro graphics and innovative gameplay mechanics, immerse yourself in a tale of friendship, determination, and the power of mercy.

Check Price Buy at GOG
We earn a commission if you make a purchase, at no additional cost to you.

Bottom Line Up Front

There are no official Undertale comics, but there are a few books and many fan comics. These comics are mostly found on Tumblr; none have been made canon, and most stray far from canon. Some easy recommendations are Aftertale, Handplates, and Dogs of Future Past.

Official Books and Products

Every official book doesn’t really provide extra lore and whatnot, but it is still really cool for any fan interested in reading about the game. So the only official source of canon reading material is stuff like the official Undertale Tumblr or the newsletter.

Legends of Localization

Undertale Comics Legends of Localization
Image from Fangamer

Both books contain interesting facts about Japanese as a language, Undertale getting translated into it, and Toby Fox’s interesting choices when working with the localization team on the game. This is an excellent read if you love learning fascinating facts about the effort and decisions behind things like translating a game.

These come in 2 books, a main book covering much of the game’s content and another companion piece that goes into more intricate and minor details. Both are great to pick up if you’re interested in reading about things like wordplay or jokes that had to be entirely rewritten because they wouldn’t work in Japanese.

Art Books

Art Books Undertale Comics
Image from Fangamer

These two books are about how the art in Undertale is designed. The first one has a ton of clean renders of the art in the game and concept art, with detailed explanations of each piece included. I’d recommend this one if you want to look into how Undertale was designed and enjoy a good read about the characters’ origins.

The cross stitch book is an arts and crafts project detailing how to cross-stitch many characters and their sprites. It also can optionally come with all the materials you need to make everything inside. This one has some neat text and content, and most instructions are written in character, which is fun to read.

Undertale Piano Score

Undertale Piano Score Undertale Comics
Image from Fangamer.
  • Link to the Complete Piano Score: https://www.fangamer.com/collections/undertale/products/undertale-piano-score-book

While not a book to read per se, the piano collection is a bunch of sheet music with some exciting and fun notes by Toby to read. If you’re interested in playing these songs on the piano, check this one out; they’re usually better and simpler to play than most fanmade notations out there.

Fanmade Comics

Now into the real meat of this. While I wish there were some official comics to read in the same vein as Hollow Knight or Sonic, the fans have filled this niche to a massive extent, providing thousands of pages to read about Undertale.

Whether they be original characters in the universe or expanding on the same story, there are a ton of comics to get into. But, a fair warning; if you get invested in any of these, most have no definite ending since they’re almost always either still going or have been on indefinite hiatus for years.

Ask Frisk and Co.

Ask Frisk and Co.
From Askfriskandcompany on Tumblr

Potentially the most well-known fan comic around, Ask Frisk and Company started as a simple blog to let you ask questions to the Undertale gang, which they’d answer in character. However, it quickly spiraled into a vast overarching story that has been going on for the last seven years and still going, somehow.

In my opinion, the series got too far into fanmade characters and ideas in the Undertale universe, where barely anything nowadays has to do with the original cast and ideas presented in the game. It’s still a fun read that spirals off after the events of the True Pacifist route of Undertale, though.

The story starts with all the characters living together in a big mansion, including Flowey, who’s been taken in a pot, and shenanigans ensue from there. All the asks get answered in a simple black-and-white style, with more detailed colored pieces coming around whenever more detail is called for.

Dreemurr Reborn

Dreemurr Reborn Undertale Comics
From Dreemurr-reborn on Tumblr

A comic based on the premise of Undertale’s true pacifist route, but with a straightforward change, you give your soul to Asriel before he turns back into Flowey, keeping him as Asriel permanently. The comic mainly focuses on Asriel growing up and living from there and is more of a slice-of-life story than too focused on action.

The only real problem with this comic is that it has been on hiatus since 2018, I remember reading through this one years ago, and it’s barely gotten any more content. From what I’ve heard, the creator has shifted to working on the game in their free time, but I wouldn’t expect many updates on that either.

I’d recommend checking out the comic and the game since they’re both high quality (and the game has music from DM Dokuro, which is incredible) and worth your time, don’t expect any updates on either anytime soon. For reference, the last update was them making a Twitter account when everyone was leaving Tumblr, and the Twitter account has three whole posts.

Underfell

Underfell Undertale Comics
Image from hiimtryingtounderfell on Tumblr.

Suppose you’re interested in the fangame Deltatraveler. In that case, you may want to check this one out, for no particular reason, none at all—p—potentially the most well-known Alternate Universe Undertale fan story. Of course, many, many “AU’s” exist for Undertale, but if you’ve ever seen a black and red Sans with a gold tooth, this is where he came from.

Even though the artist is still posting, the comic hasn’t been updated in a few years. So this one is more of a read if you want to understand more Undertale fan culture rather than delving into a super intricate story, it plays it kind of straight as a fan-comic depicting the events of Undertale, but everyone is mean.

The only cool part is Flowey becoming nice and joining Frisk for the entire comic. Otherwise, it’s more or less what you’d expect, just Undertale, but everyone has the opposite personality and is usually just trying to kill Frisk on sight. Still, a cool read if you want to experience the first fan media to be prevalent for a while.

Aftertale

Aftertale Undertale Comics
From loverofpiggies on Tumblr.

One of the rarest things in history happened: an Undertale comic got started and then finished. Crazy, right? This one has a lovely hand-drawn aesthetic (most of the time) and is based around Sans remembering what happened to him after a reset on the genocide route—interesting concept, great art, and finished, incredible.

This one also spawned the glitchy Sans, another Undertale fanbase icon, but it has significantly more to it than just being the game but different. It’s pretty cool seeing Sans just vaguely remembering what happened to him after you decided to murder everyone, not trusting you and thinking about it a lot.

I’d heavily recommend reading through this one. It is a pretty good comic and focuses on mostly the same characters you know and love from Undertale the whole way through. Who knew you could have a concentrated comic that makes a concerted effort to expand on the universe rather than trying to make everything about your original characters?

Zombietale

Zombietale Undertale Comics
From zombie-frisk on Tumblr

Now hear me out on this one, this comic may be just a retelling of Undertale, but with Frisk being a zombie instead, and yet, it’s great. It started seven years ago and hasn’t had a proper update in 2 years, but from what we have of this comic, it has been pretty great. The art is stellar, and the story maintains the grim and silly dynamic.

It’s a little different from your typical zombie story. Frisk doesn’t act wholly mindless but gets extremely violent impulses at times that lead to their infection spreading. Unfortunately, I read through this entire comic in less than an hour because there haven’t been many updates, but I also read a compelling story where Flowey seems like a good guy.

It contains some fun shenanigans with a mumbling and bumbling kid who bites people sometimes and some genuinely horrifying things. What a great way to put a spin on the original story of Undertale while also keeping its vibe the same, in between comedy and tension. Highly recommend this one.

Handplates

Handplates Undertale Comics
From zarla on DeviantArt

The rare comic hosted on Deviantart instead of Tumblr (which makes it a bit more challenging to read, in my opinion) Handplates is an origin story for Dr. W. D. Gaster. It depicts Sans and Papyrus as his creations. It’s more interesting than Gaster’s usual fanmade origin story since they give him an original design and make him a terrible person. However, even when you think things are wrong in this, they get darker, yet darker.

This comic is one I have seen pop up a lot, and it’s a fan favorite for a reason. It’s been going on since 2015 and is still getting updates. Unlike what I’ve seen of other Undertale comics that still get updates, this one is still very hyperfocused on Gaster’s origins and has created a satisfying story despite the updates. It pretty much entirely exists to try and flesh out the most mysterious character.

It starts with Sans and Papyrus telling Frisk about the handplates they have permanently embedded into their bones and spiraling into an absolute boatload of character development for Gaster, Sans, and Papyrus. I like this one. Even if you don’t agree with the ideas it presents or don’t care about Gaster, every character is on-point, the art is excellent, and it’s an easy recommendation.

Storyshift

Storyshift Undertale Comics
From ut-storyshift on Tumblr

If you thought being hosted on DeviantArt was weird, this one is mainly on Imgur. It’s a “comic” in the sense that its visuals are put with words, but it’s mostly just a collection of edited screenshots from the game to tell another story about “what if we took the same plot of Undertale, but things were just a little bit different, again.”

This one swaps characters and personalities around. Papyrus is the caretaker of the ruins, Sans is the king of the Underground, and various other character swaps change the tone and mood of different scenes, but the overarching story ends up being the same. Unfortunately, it ended right before the finale would have happened, on a cliffhanger, six years ago. They’re making a reboot, but I wouldn’t expect it anytime soon.

You should check this out to see the same overall story, just altered in varying ways, along with some nice-looking sprite art and some different scenes. Again, I think the format is bizarre; It would be more effort, but a pixel-art comic book style would have been way better, in my opinion. But, in its current state, it may still be worth checking out.

Dogs of Future Past

Dogs of Future Past Undertale Comics
From lynxgriffin on Tumblr.

Another one focused on life for the gang after Undertale, and this one has been finished as well. It’s a pretty well-illustrated comic, mainly in black in white. It takes place on the surface, where they’ve taken Flowey in a pot and is starting their new lives together, and shenanigans ensue, as you might assume.

The comic is also about Gaster (isn’t every comic) and focuses on trying to get him back while also just starting a new life on the surface. It opens with Flowey and Frisk sharing a conversation about the strange encounters they’ve had with those associated with Gaster, and things escalate with Sans from there. Also, there are dogs, and they are good.

While this one does have an almost identical setup to Ask Frisk and Co. I enjoy this one quite a bit for what it is. That is a self-contained, finished comic that sticks to the cast of Undertale without introducing any original characters and is quality throughout. Highly recommend this one. It’s very, very interesting.

Aftertale, But Like, the Other One

Aftertale, But Like, the Other One Undertale Comics
Image from readaftertale on Tumblr.

Ok, so this Aftertale is entirely different and coincidentally named the same thing as the other one. This one used to be an interactive comic ala Homestuck, but the interactivity has been completely removed to preserve it since Flash is dead, I presume. Either way, still a fun comic with a cute art style.

This one focuses on a goat boss monster who looks similar to Asriel and takes place a year after the game’s events. This is another “telling an entirely different story with original characters in the same universe” type comic. Still, I think focusing on only a limited amount of original characters through most of its duration was a great thing.

Unfortunately, the lack of interactivity makes this one too much to read nowadays. Ever gone onto a wiki page for a game and just got sheer information overload from the enormous walls of text that can be there at times? Yeah, this one suffers from a similar thing, and it hasn’t been updated since 2018. Still, a good read if more in-universe, original shenanigans are what you’re after.

Flavor Text Chara

Flavor Text Chara Undertale Comics
From flavor-text-chara on Tumblr.

This is an exciting take on the “Undertale but different” concept. It features Chara, the first fallen human, following Frisk through their journey in the Underground. Of course, they’re just going through the entire game, but with an observer commenting on everything they see you do and your choices.

I like this take a lot more since it’s trying to give a new perspective rather than just altering events to make a similar story with different elements. Unfortunately, this one didn’t get too far off the ground. It ended in the middle of Hotland with not much buildup or sendoff to be had, just ending abruptly.

The creator has said anyone can continue the story if they’d like, but nothing’s official. I enjoyed this story of Frisk just doing their own thing as Chara makes their jaded, upset comments on things while learning a new perspective on the world. I’d recommend this one, but remember; there is almost no hope for it to be continued any time soon; it’s been officially and permanently canned.

Gaster Bros.

Gaster Bros. Undertale Comics
From Leafaske on Tumblr

What if, instead of presenting Gaster as always being Sans and Papyrus’ father, weird dead observer, or some other strange thing, he was their brother instead? This one presents itself more like a sitcom, with some of the cleanest looking art I’ve ever seen in an Undertale comic. A neat concept, too, even though most of it is shenanigans.

Unfortunately, there’s no super-easy way to read this one, considering the artist has only provided the tag on Tumblr for you to sort through if you wish. Despite that, the artist has made a few physical prints of this to be sold on their website (which is currently unavailable). If this were easier to read and collected all in one place as a continuous story with every page leading into the next, it would be easier to recommend.

I still enjoyed reading it, despite only being able to find it out of order. It’s just some fun shenanigans and an incredibly unique take on Gaster, all things considered. Almost every comic comes to tackling the concept of Gaster at some point, so this fresh and fun take on the doctor is like a breath of fresh air after a bunch of comics that all had him be almost the same.

Undertale Parallel

Undertale Parallel Undertale Comics
From undertaleparallel on Tumblr.

Like StoryShift, this is another sprite art comic that relies on in-game screenshots with edits to tell its story. At least it’s not hosted on Imgur this time, though. This one is based around the simple concept of everything being the same, except Asriel never died, and you get to meet him through your journey in the Underground.

This one has some lousy grammar (they didn’t even spell Toby right in the credits?), and the sprite art can be a bit meh and low-res at times, but the fact is that it’s one of the more interesting takes I’ve seen on rehashing Undertale’s story with a twist. The truth is, Asriel’s death was a significant shift in the entire Underground, so seeing that not happen is pretty neat.

Even though the concept is exciting, and it’s been going long enough to do Deltarune stuff, it’s got a ton of problems that, in my eyes, pile up and make it difficult to read. Even if you’re invested in the things, it brings to the table that every poorly written line, grammatical error, or off-looking sprite will keep piling up. So, again, it would be better as an illustrated comic or a fan game and worth checking out if you want to.

Alternate Universe Christmas Party

Alternate Universe Christmas Party Undertale Comics
From loverofpiggies on Tumblr

The absolute culmination of the ridiculous amount of alternate universe Sans characters people have made over the years, this one is purely just seeing them all interact at a fun Christmas party with terrible sweaters. Unfortunately, half the characters represented in this come from stories that don’t exist, namely UnderSwap has since been removed, and Science Sans never had a story, to begin with.

It has no actual plot or continuity, and most of the reason you’d want to read through it nowadays is that you either really, really love Sans or you’re like me and grew up with these characters and this comic. I remember reading this when I was younger and loving it. So if you’re still invested in Undertale AU’s and whatnot, it’s made for you.

It’s still a fun time to read through independently, though. Writing this entire guide has been a bit of a trip since I used to keep up with these things when I was younger, but here I am, old and sad, reading a comic about five different Sans’, and it’s not nearly as insane or incredible as it was to 13 year old me. Still, a fun read that’s all about the fluff: it just felt cooler seven years ago.

Many, Many Others

If you want a good list to check out for your Undertale reading needs, then you should check out this list on Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/Undertale/comments/3yjfpt/so_uh_hiyas_are_you_in_need_of_an_au_spoilers/ It contains tons of different comics, stories, and other things for you to check out, and even more lists within this list to list off more things.

Tons of others have done similar things to the ones I listed above, but the ones I chose to highlight here are mainly the ones I enjoy or are notable for having their original content celebrated by the fanbase. (Or because the other ones I wanted to highlight have been deleted, unfortunately.) It’s weird to think some people saw Underfell sans before they knew what Undertale was.

Undertale: Shape Your Destiny Beneath the Surface | GOG
Undertale: Shape Your Destiny Beneath the Surface | GOG

Embark on an unforgettable journey through the underground world of Undertale, where every choice you make shapes the fate of monsters and humans alike. With its charming retro graphics and innovative gameplay mechanics, immerse yourself in a tale of friendship, determination, and the power of mercy.

Check Price Buy at GOG
We earn a commission if you make a purchase, at no additional cost to you.

Questions and Answers

Question: Is there an official comic for Undertale?

Answer: Despite the whole host of fan comics, no official comic for Undertale has ever been made, and Toby Fox has never officially endorsed a fan comic.

Answer: Ask Frisk and Co. has been running since 2015 and is still going, having accrued many fans over the years. It’s pulled in over 3 million notes and has about 12,500 original posts.

Question: Where can I find Undertale comics?

Answer: Almost every Undertale fan comic is hosted on Tumblr, so going on there and searching for “Undertale Comic” will usually yield results.

Conclusion

As with most franchises, fans decide to fill the void when there’s no official avenue to enjoy something in a certain way. I think that’s what happened with Undertale comics; not only was there a massive explosion of different comics, they all spurred around 2016 when the game peaked in popularity. Since there was no official comic, a million fanmade ones came instead.

Honestly, it’s strange that no official comic has been made. I’m sure people would be dying to see some shenanigans from before you fell into the Underground or catch up with the characters later on the surface. Maybe even have a Deltarune one based on what the Delta gang did in their daily lives. Either way, many fan comics exist which are worth checking out.

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