Anthologies are a bit like speed dating for comics. Maybe you’ll have a fling with a genre or style outside your usual interests. Maybe you’ll fall head over heels in love with a new creator’s work. Whether you’re looking for your next great comics romance or just want to have some fun, they’re a great way to break out of a reading rut and explore the medium.
Twisted Romance, an Image series headlined by writer Alex de Campi, is basically an anthology series. A main, self-contained story by de Campi, drawn by a different artist in every issue, sets a theme for additional creators to contribute a short prose story and a backup comic. The first issue contained romance stories that had a supernatural twist; the second (out for Valentine’s Day!) unravels the twists and turns love can take, exploring the epistemology of love itself. How do we know what we know about love?
Turns out, people make a lot of assumptions about love. And a lot of the time, people assume wrong. While that’s a pretty agonizing state of affairs in real life—seriously, why do we do this to ourselves? – it makes for some exquisitely, deliciously heartfelt stories, including the three in this issue.
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Alejandra Gutiérrez teams up with de Campi for the main story, “Twinkle and the Star,” about a girl named Twinkle who meets a sexy celebrity during a photoshoot. Twinkle assumes she’s not as attractive as the rail-thin, ultra-glam models and fashionistas she works with, but Gutiérrez’s depiction of Twinkle, with an effortless economy of detail and a sherbet hued palette, suggests that’s all in her head. Sexy celebrities certainly like her. Twinkle is hot. Twinkle is cool. She’s all of the temperatures except tepid.
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The twist in this romance left me wondering what Twinkle’s happily-ever-after would look like down the road. Never settle, folks, even if you think you’re settling up. At the same time, her story reminds us not to be afraid to check in with ourselves about what matters to us most. You never know when something unexpected turns out to be exactly what makes you happy. Perhaps the most satisfying twist of all in this tale is that, when all is said and done, Twinkle loves herself more at the end of this story than she did at the beginning. That’s about as happily-ever-after as anyone could hope for.
In Vita Ayala’s prose short, “Back At Your Door,” the boundary between platonic and romantic love is murky as three queer young women try to figure out their happily-ever-afters. It’s full of the messy, human aspects of love—longing, misunderstanding, heartache, bliss. The backup comic by Meredith McClaren, “Would You Even Know It,” approaches the topic from the opposite point and ponders how the boundaries of love define what it is to be human. These stories nicely bookend the theme of the issue, exploring the spectrum of emotional and cerebral ways we grapple with understanding love.
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I can’t help but feel that this series is almost like getting advice on your love life from de Campi and the cohort of creators she’s brought on. If the takeaway from the first issue was “maybe don’t date a succubus or other supernatural creature,” (which is probably very good advice, but you do you!), issue two is almost certainly urging us to interrogate what love and romance really mean to each of us. Or maybe it’s just about enjoying a nice happily-ever-after. Either way, Twisted Romance #2 has a whole lot of both, and it’s a great way to treat yourself this Valentine’s Day.
(images: Image Comics)
Tia Vasiliou is a senior digital editor at comiXology. You can find her on Twitter @PortraitofMmeX.
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