“Love is Love”

In its essence, the dominant theme of Love is Love suggests that no matter what its origins or no matter to whom it is given, love is exactly that – love, worthy of being given, worthy of being received, and worthy of being acknowledged, respected and celebrated. The primary manifestation of this theme in the collection is in how several comics portray relationships between same-sex couples, but there are a variety of different sorts of relationships that present echoes of it. Parent/child relationships, opposite-gender relationships, relationships in which one person is differently abled or transgender – all are evocations of this essential thematic contention.

A key component of this theme is how love is presented as transcendent of, and enabling transcendence, of that which would deny its worth to those who seem, or are, different from what is perceived as normal. In many ways, in...