Mr. Vertigo

Love Everlasting Volume 1
Tom King, writer; Elsa Charretier, artist; Matt Hollingsworth, colorist; Clayton Cowles, letterer
Image Comics, 2023

On the face of it, Love Everlasting is a callback to classic romance comics (which is probably why I backburnered it after sampling a few early issues). Heroine Joan Peterson is a hopeless romantic, constantly falling for one man after another. But there is a twist: the scenes keep shifting in time and place. First, a big city in what looks like the 1950s; then a suburb in the 1960s; next, an Arizona ranch during the Wild West era; and so on. Each with a different man and a fresh problem to be solved–and every time she falls in love, she finds herself starting over in another love story. Towards the end of this collection she figures it out while talking to a counselor. Every time she says “no” to a suitor a cowboy shows up, says “love is everlasting,” and shoots and kills her. It will be interesting to see what she does with this knowledge going forward. With that established, it should be easier to follow as a reader as well. All this rapid, seemingly random scene shifting was getting confusing! King’s dialog is always sharp, and the visuals are perfectly attuned to the story. Charretier even finds ways to vary her panel designs, despite the inherent conservatism in the romance comics format (using word balloons on the covers is a nice period touch).

Ice Cream Man Volume 11: Horror, Horror
W. Maxwell Prince, writer; Martín Morazzo, artist; Chris O’Halloran, colorist
Image Comics, 2025

The marquee entry here is issue # 43, a star-studded collection of 24 one-page horror stories. The featured guests are Grant Morrison, Patton Oswalt, Zoe Thorogood, Geoff Johns, Jeff Lemire, Kelly Sue DeConnick, Matt Fraction, Good Old Neon (the regular letterer of the series), Deniz Camp, and Frank Barbiere. Prince contributes several stories himself, including experiments like a prose story and a scary reminder of current events courtesy of The New York Times. It’s quite a kaleidescope (many, but not all of the stories refer directly to the Ice Cream Man; however, they are all horror of one sort or another) and single page stories fly right by. The collection also includes a Graham Greene-style spy story set in Cuba and a haunted house tale full of interstitial discussions of the horror genre (plus more real-life horrors from The New York Times).  References to a mysterious conglomorate named Holt are a recurring element, so it is fitting that the final chapter deals with a surreal performance review of a Holt employee. As usual the volume concludes with a colection of variant covers from the monthly issues.