Love Everlasting #9 // Revie
Time has been a little strange. Given a long enough timeline, everything has a tendency to blur together. Joan and her husband have been together for 30 years. Why is he suddenly suffering from allergies that she doesn’t remember? She and her husband got married when they were in their 20s. So why is it that his parents seem so young? Could it have something to do with the fact that she’s stuck in a romance comic book? The mystery of Joan’s life continues in Love Everlasting #9. Writer Tom King continues a very compelling deconstruction of the romance genre with another issue pulled passionately to the page by artist Elsa Charretier. Colorist Matt Hollingsworth brings warmth and depth to the visuals.
Don’s coughing up a lot of blood. Joan is reluctant to go through with dinner with the Drakes, but he assures her he’s fine. (He isn’t. Not by a long shot.) The doctor says that in the modern era of 1963, they can do a lot more than they could for a patient with Don’s affliction than they could in the past, but it doesn’t sound good. Life seems to be well outside the realm of Joan’s control.
King dives into a particularly dark end of romance as things begin to fall and falter in Joan’s life. What had been a strange and wondrous journey with romance tumbling in and around the edges of everything in a surrealistic journey has evolved into something much more settled and resigned. King’s characterization of Joan is incredibly complex. Like so many women of her generation, she’s forced to say only some of what she means. She’s limited in expression...a situation which is complicated by the fact that she genuinely doesn’t understand everything that’s gone on in her life. There’s a breathtaking emotional complexity about it all.
Charretier grounds the 1960s era of the issue in a very 1960s feel. Don and Joan look almost like clip art from the era in big, blocky black that contrasts against simple, empty space and just enough detail to allow the eye to complete the picture. The dramatic moments have a silent stillness about them that serves this late stage in the life of the couple quite well. Hollingsworth’s colors follow the leads of the art with a powerful sense of sanguine simplicity that keeps the tone compellingly somber straight through to the final panel.
Given how sad the issue is, it’s remarkable how truly captivating it is. Aside from the predictable ending, there’s only one major plot development. Somehow, King and company manage to keep Joan’s emotional journey so totally pure and uncluttered that it grabs hold of the reader and doesn’t let go until the end. And of course there’s more. Joan advances into older age, which should take the series up through the mid-to-late 1960s and beyond. It’s been an interesting journey thus far, but it’ll be interesting to see where King and company take it as the series continues its descent with Joan.
