The night I first learned about Love is Love, the comic panel anthology about, and a fundraiser for victims of the Pulse nightclub tragedy, I ordered three copies. That was weeks ago. They finally arrived today. I haven't read it all yet; this is a book to be read slowly, and with full attention. Read a few pages. Let them hit bottom. Give yourself a chance to stop tearing up and sniffling. The cover looked innocuous, but this book is packed with written and visual dynamite.
Get this book. Be prepared to cry. And feel hope and pride.
It's not all sad. It's about the triumph of love and hope in the ruins, about lessons being taught and learned, about what has changed, and what has remained the same. What children were taught, and are taught, and what we might all learn about acceptance, about carrying on.
The art runs from the abstract to 'Calvin and Hobbes' style simplicity, to full-blown operatic superhero style, and every line and drop of ink rings with passion. The writing runs from elegy to cautionary tale to full-throated celebration of the idea behind the name of this collection: Love is Love. It's all terrific.
I'm an old straight white guy in his sixties, married over thirty years. My on-again/off-again love affair with comics stretches back into the late fifties, which was also when anti-gay prejudice began being drilled into me, when it--along with racism, sexism, and xenophobia--was trained into most of us my age.
But that shit didn't stick, maybe because I had enough hate thrown my way, maybe because as I grew up I began taking people for who they were and what they did, not what I was told I was supposed to think of them. Which is a happy ending. It meant I've had some great--and some fabulous--gay men and women for friends over these many years.
Three copies. One for our house. One for my life-long friend Dale and his husband of twenty-some years Cyril; Dale was our best man, back in his wilder pre-Cyril days, and he and Cyril remain some of the best men I know. I can give this to them and know it will mean something. One copy is for the library for which I am a long-time trustee. I may have to get more copies. If some kid who really needs to read and keep this book swipes it, then I will gladly replace it with another copy. And another after that if need be. If a kid reads this and it helps them feel better about themselves, or helps them come to grips with the fear they might feel after an event like Pulse then they take it with my blessing.
You may have to wait to get a copy, the first print run may have already run out. Order anyway, it's worth the wait. Get several copies, and give them out as needed. This book is an extended middle finger given to the haters and bashers and shamers. And the here-unnamed killer, and the hate that propelled him.