This is Universal Love, a month-long spotlight on LGBTQ comic book stories that I have enjoyed over the years. This isn’t meant as a “Best Of” list, since there are so many great works out there and so I’ll spread the love around a bit, as it were.
Today, we look at the haunting love story in Liebestrasse by Greg Lockard and Tim Fish, with colors by Hector Barros and letters and design by Lucas Gattoni. This was a Comixology original graphic novel.
The story is about a young man named Samuel who moves to Germany along with his boss to establish a financial business in the country. Germany during the Weimar Republic era, particularly in Berlin, was shockingly progressive in its sexual mores. So soon enough, Samuel meets another young man named Philip, and they fall in love very quickly…
However, even as they are enjoying their newfound love, they note that things are changing in the country, ever so slightly….
In a modern United States of America where we can see first hand how quickly certain rights can be stripped away in an instant after decades being spent fighting for them, it is extra pertinent to see a society slowly go down a dark path and yet everyone can’t really believe that it would ever get THAT bad, and yet that is obviously precisely what is going to happen.
They meet Philip’s sister, Hilde, whose artwork is oddly aggravating to the conservatives in the country. It is a fascinating question, as there doesn’t seem to be anything inherent in her work that should make it so controversial, as it is clearly just abstract art, but I guess one of the “problems” with abstract art is that it can be interpreted in wildly different ways and the conservatives of Germany at the time were clearly reading some heavy stuff into her work that they did not appreciate.
As time goes by, though, things get progressively worse, as the Nazis are slowly coming to power more and more, and it is evident that this is soon going to be a very dangerous place for anyone who speaks out against the nationalism that is spreading through Germany and that, tragically, rhetoric can actually get you killed now…
There is this great sense of inevitability in the comic, as Samuel is an American. There is always that hanging over the air, that he can get out of this situation at pretty much any point. The same could not be said for Philip. Yet, at the same time, Philip is just SO sure of himself that it is hard to really blame Samuel for being taken in by Philip’s confidence. Again, as noted earlier, situations like these are almost like the proverbial boiled frog who doesn’t realize that he is being boiled alive as the water just gets slowly warmer and warmer (“boiled frog syndrome” is just a myth, of course, as this doesn’t actually happen in real life. There was a very long period of time when researchers could pretty much say whatever nonsense they felt like it and it would become ingrained into our society as “Oh yeah, that’s totally true. Spinach also has 1000% of your normal daily dosage of iron. Yep, that’s the ticket), so Philip can’t believe that things will really prove deadly for him and his conffidence fools Samuel into believing it, as well.
As Samuel gets warned at his job, though, it is obvious that things are just going to get worse…
And when he is arrested and fired? There is a great line where the Nazi official suggests that he could send Samuel home at any point, but he felt it might be crueler to leave him here to see what is coming next…
As things begin to truly fall apart, you can almost feel Samuel’s anguish as he realizes that he and his love are in very different places, security-wise…
Tim Fish is brilliant, and he is paired well with Barros in telling a charming, and yet heartbreaking narrative. Lockard, meanwhile, understands that the reader knows where this is all heading, and yet he knows that, played well, it can be just as affecting as if the audience was oblivious, and he really does pull it off.
This is a sad, but powerful, work.
If you have a suggestion for an LGBTQ work that you’d like to see me spotlight, feel free to drop me a line at brianc@cbr.com.