Love Everlasting, Volume 2

Love Everlasting #2

by Tom King (Writer), Elsa Charretier (Illustrator), Matt Hollingsworth (Colorist)

The mind-bending story of Joan Peterson's journey through love and horror continues in the second epic and heartbreaking arc of this critically acclaimed, Harvey-nominated series. After traveling from romance to romance, Joan finds herself trapped inside just one story, growing older with the love of her life instead of escaping again and again. And as she becomes a wife, a mother, a grandmother, she is on a bloody quest to discover if everyone in this new world is insane, or if she alone is broken. Collects LOVE EVERLASTING #6-10

Genres: Comics, Graphic Novels, Romance, Fantasy, Horror, Graphic Novels Comics, Comic Book

137 pages, Kindle Edition

First published November 14, 2023

Reviews

[Jayson · Rating 3 out of 5]

(B+) 78% | Good
Notes: On mental strife, a housewife life, all poignant stuff but drones, it's never-dwelling storytelling and awful monotone.

*Progress updates: Preamble ◦ Issue #6 ◦ Issues #7-8 ◦ Issues #9-10

[Rod Brown · Rating 3 out of 5]

This outing requires a little patience as Tom King takes the long way round on the road to the next level of this metafiction take on romance comics. I'm looking forward to seeing the fallout next time.

[Robert · Rating 4 out of 5]

But Joan! comics aren't supposed to MAKE ME FEEL!!!

[Rick Ray · Rating 3 out of 5]

The second volume of Tom King's and Elsa Charretier's Love Everlasting ditches the shifting perspectives and instead positions the protagonist Joan in a single setting. Joan is now trapped in the year 1963, living out her entire life as a housewife. It's a fun spin on the Lynchian style of storytelling from the first volume whereby Joan (and by extension, the reader) finds herself questioning WTF is going on. King does a great job peppering in hints as to what is going on, but "Too Hip for Love" continues to play coy with respect to giving out complete answers. It'll be interesting to see if King can unravel the mystery in a satisfying way, but for now, I'm enjoying the mystery as presented. Adding to the quality of this comic is Charretier's stunning artwork which continues to impress. The trappings of a romance comic with the off-kilter, surreal quality is rendered well in Charretier's timeless aesthetic choices, making this pretty unique work in the current mainstream indie comics landscape. Though the story isn't quite blowing me away, I'm still enjoying Love Everlasting for the underlying mystery and the great artwork.

[Anna Quilter · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting and improved from Volume 1...Joan finds herself trapped in a long lasting marriage that happens through a long 1963.
Nothing is black or white here..and once you think you have an answer..it slithers away from you

[Brandon Forsyth · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love the way King is playing with the rules he established in the first volume already. This is horror with a distinctly unique twist, and while I have no idea where this is going, I’m in for the full ride. The art continues to be absolutely stunning and the story evokes some real pathos as well. Easily the most impressive comic I’ve read all year.

[Pénélope · Rating 3 out of 5]

We're really taking the scenic route here, this volume took way too long to get to *that* ending, and it's still another cliffhanger? If the series doesn't conclude with Volume 3, I'm probably not gonna continue reading on.

[Ed Erwin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Still not really sure why any of this bs is happening to Joan.

[Zedsdead · Rating 3 out of 5]

In v1, Joan popped into one overwrought romance after another as fast as her suitors could declare their everlasting love.

In v2, her tormentors leave her stuck in one lifelong relationship with a man she respects but doesn't love. They marry, and have children, and grandchildren, and grow old together. An entire lifetime--false though it is--packed into one volume. Ranchhand Bill stops in from time to time but declines Joan's requests to shoot her and move her on to the next story.

Well-written as it is (and it is; King and Charretier have mastered the speech, tropes, and look of the gooey romance genre, and they lampoon it ferociously) v2 makes almost zero plot progress, treading water for five issues. Couldn't wait for it to be done.

Thankfully, the author throws us a bone on the final page:
"Before I shoot you, your mother wants to know...did you learn anything?"
"You know what, I think I did. I learned that I'm going to kill you. Then I'm going to kill her."

[Dakota Morgan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Here we are again with Joan, stuck in a romance against her will. Unlike the first volume, though, Joan remains in the same scenario throughout the volume, allowing us to see how it would actually play out. As usual, Tom King uses more words than necessary and takes a long time to unpack simple ideas... and yet, it's all deeply compelling. It's basically the life story of a housewife, but expertly told. I was absorbed. (The gorgeous mid-century artwork helped keep me glued to the pages as well.)

Of course, King mixes in little reminders that Joan knows she's not meant to be here. There's a section in the middle where Joan denies her new life and ends up in asylums (she can't stop noticing that it's always 1963, after all). That said, none of the reminders seem to be adding up to a big picture reveal. The smoking cowboy is just hanging around, and the book's conclusion doesn't really lead anywhere new.

Still, Love Everlasting has me in its clutches. I'll eagerly return for another volume of Joan in love against her will.

[Alex Sarll]

This time Joan is going through the motions, assuming she knows the rules - but the reset never comes, and she finds herself, more or less by accident because she was just trying to get it over with and move on to the next story, married, then settled down with two children, and then they grow up... So after a volume where the horror was the reset after reset, forever being thrust into a new life, here the horror is...not. It's a smart defamiliarisation strategy, a new way to talk about that overfamiliar topic, the claustrophobia of post-War American suburban domesticity. And then, beyond that, the even more familiar topic, so much so that we usually can't see it at all, where each of us starts out with such grand plans, gets distracted by love, and then just once you decide actually you're OK with that distraction, it hits you that there's a time limit, and one day, even if love never ends, someone's alone again, and isn't that the most monstrously unfair thing? Heartbreaking, in very non-romance-comic ways.

[Adam Fisher · Rating 5 out of 5]

:O Just when I thought it couldn't get better...
After Volume 1, all of us readers thought we knew, along with Joan, just how this "fall in love then start over in a different era" works. WE DID NOT.... at least not in all the ways.
This Volume Joan, chooses Don to fall for because she really wants her life to change, due to boredom. She agrees to marry him, they have kids, they get old.... no matter what, it always stays 1963. BUT, because she never really truly loved him, she never moves on to the next. Only close to death, she falls for a man in her nursing home... and immediately reboots.
Now she's pissed... and kills the guy she "currently" loves. Next on her list? The cowboy she never stops seeing, and then her Mother, the architect of this whole crazy ride.

Where is Volume 3? I need it! This book is so good!

[Sara · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love the look of this series and want to like the story, but I am struggling. Seeing Joan bounce from one romantic trope to another with the same grim conclusion is exhausting. Maybe that is the point, but it sure makes it hard to latch on to the overall mystery of Joan's circumstances.

[SuperWendy · Rating 4 out of 5]

This has been an odd little series. In this collection our hapless heroine, Joan, is feeling trapped and figures if she marries the perfectly nice guy her parents set her up with (and dumps the beatnik she's seeing...) she'll be whisked off to another Quantum Leap-like adventure. Unfortunately, no. She gets married, she gets stuck, and while she and everybody around her ages, it perpetually stays 1963. Which begs the question, were Joan's various time-traveling adventures all a delusion of her own mind?

There's some feminist underpinnings here I found interesting and I liked (?), enjoyed (?), (not quite sure how to put it), how it all spun out in the end. There's definitely room for future installments and am hoping a Volume 3 sees the light of day.

[Estibaliz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well, I wasn't most definitely not expecting that, particularly after the first volume... and it was utterly and devastatingly beautiful.

The script and dialogues, the use of color, the whole story was jus perfect, and now I'm left here thinking the third volume (is it the last one?) might be a disappointment, because this one is hard to fault, and even harder to better.

Totally unexpected and originally series, if you weren't entirely convinced after the first one (which was, indeed, slightly repetitive), don't give up and chance it with this one. I promise it will be worth your while.

[Chris Gernon · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fascinating second act of the story that takes a different direction from the first volume, as we (and Joan) are kept in the same story for quite a long time. Here, the story has enough room to explore what actually happens happily ever after … and for us to question what’s actually “real” within the narrative. Looking forward to the conclusion in volume 3!

[Jai · Rating 5 out of 5]

This volume was so maddening! I wanted Joan to be done with her boring life and jump somewhere else. She just stayed in one year for years and years until the end

[Javier Campos · Rating 4 out of 5]

le tenía pereza pero me intrigo

[Julia · Rating 5 out of 5]

i need y'all to read this

[Claire · Rating 4 out of 5]

Onestamente una serie di livello molto alto per ora, speriamo si mantenga tale

[BookCupid · Rating 3 out of 5]

Love is not everything you need.

How many times I've seen women associate self-worth with love? Here, Joan has the perfect family, two healthy boys, and yet her life is miserable. All because she isn't fully in love with Don.

Does Joan work? No. Have a hobby? No. Therefore, Joan continues with the 1940s mentality that getting married is the only thing a woman has, and as long as she is well maintained, she shouldn't complain. Yet deep inside, her mental instability threatens to ruin her in every possible way. Only it's 1963!! The beginning of feminism! Like wake up Joan.

I enjoyed the story, often waiting alongside Joan for everything to end. Sometimes just because she was annoying in her lack of self-management.

[Nate · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked this better than the first volume. Instead of short chapters featuring Joan in different romances across time, these five issues take place in one setting. Yes, Joan stays put now, aging alongside her husband and, later, their family (even though the year never changes). The whole story here paints a rather convincing portrait of a marriage, a family, a life. And gosh, the last two issues contain beautiful, heartbreaking moments. I can’t be the only one who finds romances with old couples much more affecting than with young ones.

Of course, this series being what it is, with its rules about love, things aren’t tied up nicely. I do notice that King plays with the rules he established in the first volume. I’m left questioning if I do in fact have a handle on how everything works.

[Lucas · Rating 3 out of 5]

So I guess they ditched the original structure, which makes sense considering the last issue of the first arc, but not exactly in the way I would've expected. Joan's timeline hopping is done for now. Instead we follow her over the course of an entire single life: getting married, having kids and grandkids, always waiting for the other shoe to drop.

I get the point of this in the larger narrative but, if I'm entirely honest, I thought it dragged a bit. Where the fifth issue got us infinitesimally closer to unraveling the mystery behind her unending rebirths, this just felt like a prolonged detour.

I'm still very much looking forward to where it leads, but hopefully it picks up a little in the third arc

[Becca · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the best book on my pull list at the moment by leaps and bounds. I have to fight not to just sit and read each issue in my car when I pick it up. Actually in agony that I'm going to have to wait for the series to pick up again.

This volume manages to twist the premise to keep it interesting. Taking what was good about v.1 and carrying it through to a fun conclusion that has me really hoping that this hiatus isn't four months long like the last one.

[Jordan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've been reading this series as single issues. Vol. 2 compiles issues #6-10 a.k.a. the second "arc" of the story. And what an arc! Things have really taken a turn now and the reality of Joan's "curse" is starting to open up. Can't wait to read more!

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

Round and round she goes...

[Daniel Butcher · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5
Getting the rules, but want to know what is being said about life and love a little quicker.

[Andrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tom King and Elsa Charretier have done something much more interesting with this arc than they did with the first five issues. I understand the frustration that so many of the reviewers on here are feeling—10 issues in, and there has not been any indication as to what is driving this strange cycle of rebirths?—but I also am enjoying how deliberate the pacing of the series is. One of the deficiencies of comics as a medium is the way writers sacrifice important narrative space that would add so much to their characters and to the emotional and intellectual depth of the story in order to appease their readers' (and probably their editors') eagerness for the spectacular climax.

Or, climax isn't really the right word for it. The best word I know of for what too many comics readers seem to be unwilling to wait for is anagnorisis, which plays an important role in Aristotle's theory of dramatic structure: it means discovery or recognition. "Recognition, as the name indicates, is a change from ignorance to knowledge, producing love or hate between the persons destined by the poet for good or bad fortune" is Aristotle's way of putting it; we might simplify by saying that it is the moment when not only the reader but the protagonist discovers either the identity or the true nature of their antagonist. It is not quite enough for the reader to know who the antagonist is; we have to witness the moment when this knowledge reaches the protagonist.

It is banal to observe that hidden identities are a distinctive feature of comics, but the fact remains that the originality of most comics (and not just superhero comics) depends on how skillfully the writers reinvent or tweak the protocols of anagnorisis. An excellent example of this is Spider-Man: No Way Home, which was also one of the most successful comic book movies of the past ten years.

At any rate, my point in bringing anagnorisis up was not to dissect what makes a successful comics story, but to be more precise about what kind of event readers of comics get most impatient and most demanding about when the writer withholds it. It is not resolution or dénouement. Comics stories that go on and on by adding increasingly baroque complications may irritate readers, but it's an irritation they generally will tolerate. Hold off on that moment of anagnorisis—the protagonist's discovery of the identity of the antagonist—and you get these tantrums of entitlement and impatience.

[Liz (Quirky Cat) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Summary:

Joan Peterson has fallen in love more times than she can remember. No, that’s not quite true. She remembers her past loves, at least in the end. Each love and whirlwind romance has always ended with her untimely demise. The real problem is that her death doesn’t stick.

This time around, the story will be different. Joan Peterson found herself stuck within one story. She married, grew old, became a parent, then a grandparent, lost her husband, etc. Is this how the story will end, or did she just learn something new?

Review:

The bright side to being behind on a series is that you can binge-read a couple of volumes back to back. Love Everlasting Vol. 2 probably doesn’t hit as hard as the first volume, but it’s still worth reading. That said, I still have a million questions.

The particular story in Love Everlasting Vol. 2 is more…ponderous than the previous volume. Joan actually gets to survive into old age, and there’s a lot we can learn about Joan’s situation because of it. Admittedly, this may raise more questions than it answers, but it’s a start.

The whole story is becoming increasingly surreal, especially as we see a character age, but the world around her remains unchanged. Throw in the romantic tropes and subtext, and there’s a lot to read into here.

Love Everlasting Vol. 2 is as visually striking as the first, with a few twists here and there. I’m happy that the third volume has just been released (I think), so I can try to get my hands on that one next.

Highlights:
Horror Fantasy
Looping Stories/Lives
Love, Death, Repeat

Trigger Warnings:
Death & Gore

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[Dave Schaafsma · Rating 4 out of 5]

So of course almost everyone likes this volume vastly better than the first volume, as you begin to get what King's about: Deconstructing the romance genre, especially that of the early sixties, turning it inside and out and upside down, turning it into horror, tying it to the notion of a demon/femme fatale, endlessly caught in an endless cycle of love and end of love.

In volume one, Joan Peterson discovers that she is trapped in an endless, terrifying cycle of "romance"--a problem to be solved, a man to marry. But she doesn't "love" any of them, these boy toys! Girls just want to have fu-un! A little like the love and break-up cycle of a ton of people (except for the part about being murdered after every love affair by a mysterious cowboy!). Where-air-air-air-air is love, Oliver Twist sings. Well, it ain't with all these frat boy party hounds.

In volume two the King team tries a different tack: So Joan has "been with" multiple men and it is time to settle down, and so her Dad suggests a nice guy, son of a colleague. Joan agrees to marry him on a whim when she first meets him (!) and stays with this guy through the whole volume, until old age! Finally, stability? But no, she does not love this guy, and never really has. Are they crazy? Is she crazy? Well, this cowboy character hangs around. . . And did I say that it is perpetually 1963? Twilight Zone vibes. . .

And vibes of Lady Killer, Stepford Wives, so much rethinking of the horror underlying the pink plastic veneer of housewivery and womanhood in general in post-war, pre-feminist years of the late sixties. And Ice Cream Man--a study of genre, playing with it, mashing romance with horror.

Is there anything this King guy can't do? And when you are this good, you attract the best artists, such as amazing inventive Elsa Charretier who maps Joan's decline into 1)madness? 2) self-realization? and colorist extraordinaire Matt Hollingsworth, and they make the whole project better and better. Is Ed Brubaker a great storyteller? Of course. But is he better with Sean Phillips and colorists such as Jacob Phillips and Elizabeth Breitweiser? Obviously. This is good meta-fictional stuff. With some serious attention to the nature of love and gender relations, too, I think, told through a horror lens!