Love Everlasting // Review
Love is eternal in the sturdy arms of the romance genre. Romance comics, though? They were a strange twist in the path between the Golden Age and the Silver Age that never quite made the big time in a format better suited to fantasy, crime, and horror. Writer Tom King takes an inspired look at a largely forgotten comic book genre in Love Everlasting #1. Traditional romance tropes parade through an anthology format that gradually reveals something altogether darker and more sinister, conjured to page and panel by artist Elsa Charretier and colorist Matt Hollingsworth. King’s inspired meta-fictional premise is a fascinating fusion between romance, horror, and Groundhog Day crossed with Quantum Leap.
Somewhere in the mid-20th century, Joan moved from Indiana to New York. She’s a stranger to the city, but she’s got a friend named Marla who lets her stay at her place. She’s envious of Marla’s relationship with a handsome guy named George. Marla doesn’t know that Joan lusts after George, so it seems perfectly innocent when George offers to give Joan a position at his office. What will happen when George and Joan are alone together? What will happen when Joan ends up in the arms of a folk singer in the late 1960s? Does she really want to end up with the cowboy her father wants her to be with down on the old west ranch in Maricopa? And why is she also a nurse in an entirely different story?
The title is cute, but I think that Enduring Love would have been a slightly more sinister play on the concept as that’s what Joan is forced to do. King’s initial premise is, of course, extremely clever. The same character finds herself lost in every story in the same issue of the same romance comic book. She’s doomed to live the dream of falling in love in romance over and over and over again. And since this is a traditional mid-20th century schlock cookie-cutter romance, Joan isn’t really given a whole lot of agency…just waits around for the hero to take her and propose. Things shift sharply when she realizes that she’s trapped. King allows just enough of the initial romance to play out to deliver the basic format of a romance story before peppering the edges of the narrative with Joan slowly realizing memories of the previous story before launching into the next one. The slow progression over the course of the first three stories is meticulously paced.
Charretier is wise not to give each story a drastically different art style. There might be a temptation on the part of any artist to give each story its own distinct look and feel. From mid-century office romance to folk rock romance to the old west...Charretier forms each setting with the same distinct style that carries Joan’s nightmare from one story to the next without ever deviating from the wistful romantic rendering of earnest romance. Though there is a darkness beneath the surface of the first issue, Charretier embraces the look and feel of the surface drama with great fidelity.
Now that the initial premise is delivered, the challenge will lie in keeping everything interesting. The progression through the first three stories of the series is enjoyable enough. King has given the series an intriguing momentum, but it will be difficult to keep it engaging with Joan fully aware of what’s going on. She doesn’t know WHY it’s going on, though...which will likely be the mystery moving forward. The success of the series is going to rely on what King does with the central mystery of the premise.
