Euro Reviews: Love, Love, Love – It’s Actually, ‘Just Love’

Everything you always wanted to know about love and relationships but were afraid to ask! That’s what Margreet de Heer is talking about here…

Margreet de Heer has been making comics in the Netherlands for the best part of 30 years, first with mini-comics, followed by her graphic novel introductions to philosophy, religion, and science. In 2017, she became the first Comic Artist Laureate of the Netherlands.
She’s been married to Yiri, her colourist, sounding board, and love of her life, for seven years… so it’s about time she explored the subject of love, don’t you think?
Love – such a subject, something we’re all lucky to feel, something that is as unique to us all as a fingerprint, something that we find, if we are lucky enough, that lasts us forever. Or perhaps, if we are that lucky, we find again, when we don’t necessarily expect it. Yes, that’s love. And we are lucky to find it once more.
That’s the love de Heer talks of here, the simple wonder of finding the love that lasts, a love of forever. But she does it in a way very much her own, funny, ridiculous, touching, personal, yet so wonderfully well.
Margreet’s parents were Martin and Greet. Now that’s sweet, don’t you agree? And sweetness, and knowing, and insight, and plain love, of all kinds, fill this book. 120 odd pages of discussions of love, between de Heer and Yiri. It’s super sweet stuff, looking at love in the abstract, through the prism of de Heer and Yiri, looking at it through time, through philosophical readings of love, through mythology, through history, de Heer tells a playful tale of what it means to love, what it means to be in love, to feel love.
Part historical treatise of the ways we look at love, part philosophical view of what it is to be in love, to be loved, to feel love, and part personal discussion of the artist’s feelings, Love is a beautifully silly and deeply meaningful and insightful work digging deep into what it actually means to have love, in any and all of its forms.

Simple, playful, lightweight, deep, de Heer takes us into her own love life, deeply entrenched with Yuri, of course, but she goes on to explore what her love means, through her past loves, through sex, through sex and love, the interconnectedness of it all, the way sex and love feed into everything, from the Kama Sutra to the Bible – de Heer takes a look at it all here.
It’s a beautifully done book, something that goes deep into the ideas of what love is for de Heer and, in doing that, what love is for us all. It’s wonderful, it’s ridiculous, it’s silly, it’s romantic, it’s sexy, it’s sweet, it’s passionate, it’s just love, pure and simple.

And the great thing about Love is that de Heer perfectly wraps her own life into this historical and philosophical look at love. Her life and loves, ending wonderfully in the love she feels right now, are wrapped up with a look at love in all its forms, whether that’s looking at fairy tales or just surviving a trip to IKEA… love is love, whatever form it takes.

Relationships, marriage, children, divorce, it’s all discussed here, from a personal, a philosophical, and a historical perspective, giving us something both of both the autobiographical and the historical documentary, quite a trick to pull off, yer de Heer does it – and does it oh so well.
In the end, Love is simply sweet, funny, insightful, and so wonderfully readable. It will make you look at your love, or your loves, or your idea of love, and make you think about things, think about how you feel, and make you happier for having felt that love.
de Heer’s love might not be your love or my love, but it’s a love, and that’s the important thing, this is a wonderful discussion of all that love is, can be, and it’s a joyous, funny, fantastical thing. (And yes, there’s a mention of Love Actually – which makes me very, very happy.

Love – A Discovery In Comics – Margreet de Heer, colours by Margreet de Heer & Yiri T. Kohl, translation by Dan J. Schiff, published in 2019 by NBM.