This anthology was created to raise money for Equality Orlando and the organization's support of victims' families and the survivors of the Pulse nightclub mass shooting in June 2016. I think that because the anthology was the comic book industry's way of helping and coping with the incident, I was a bit more giving in the ratings area.

IDW publishing, with support from DC Entertainment, gave free rein to their artists and writers, so there are pages with familiar characters on some pages. Most of the artwork is amazing, and conveys the deep emotional impact as well as the broad spectrum of emotions this incident wrung out of people. My favorites, even after a week of thinking and giving the work another look, was the Wonder Woman page, the Muslim man meeting a gay couple on the street and hugging them after the incident made the news (from G. Willow Wilson of course!), the Supergirl page, and the page with older LGBTQIAA members giving solace to the young members of the community (those older community members who lived through the gay rights movement and the HIV/AIDS crisis).

With that being said, it was an okay effort in terms of quality of writing and introspection. I had a few problems with some of the work showcased, not for what it tried to convey but it's placement in this anthology in the first place.

Issues:

1. For an incident that affected a big part of the Latinx part of the LGBTQIAA community, this anthology had a lot of white cishets working out their disbelief and grief over what happened, and many didn't know anyone in the area, let alone was affected by the incident. There wasn't very much Latinx voices in this anthology. Too much "how will I explain this to my kids" hand wringing as well - uh, the same thing you tell them about Las Vegas and Newtown - and just try to answer their questions as honestly as you can. Sometimes that honesty comes in "I don't know why".

2. Ace/Aros, pansexuals, and bisexuals got the short end of the stick here. Aces/Aros were mentioned once and used as kind of a punch line so that the writer could shake his/her finger at judgmental people. It distort the message and made it sound hypocritical. Bisexuals got Wonder Woman and that is it (and she doesn't even self-identify as one in the page). Pansexuals didn't get mentioned once. The predominance was white, gay, somewhat affluent in terms of character type.

3. Too much Batman. Seriously, the Gotham universe is not exactly a well of diversity, and having the rich white guy savior show up every 15 pages was not needed. Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy's relationship gets a page, but it was more like "lesbians - aren't they cute" sort of way.

4. The beginning of the book was too heavy on the dark and disturbing, especially when artists showed dead bodies lying everywhere. Or the use of multiple cell phones going off and nobody answering. There was a lot artistic renderings of the crime scene that did not add any value to a book that is supposed to celebrating love and life. Not much humor found in the rest of the book - maybe a line here or there, some unintentionally.

5. Some of the transgender characters were used to explore others' feelings about transgenderism rather than about the transgender characters' feelings or storyline.

I have 40% left in Triangle, so that is the first one to read. There may be less left due to the index, sources, etc. taking up a big part of the page count.

Starting tomorrow, I will be reading off my COYER Winter Switch reading list, kicking off with volume one of Ms. Marvel and A Right Honorable Gentleman by Courtney Milan (previously published in RWA's anthology Premiere).

I will also begin reading Love is Love edited by Phil Jimenez, a graphic novel anthology that was created to raise money for Pulse Nightclub victims and survivors.

To round out the end of BoB cycle 21, I might get to Hamilton's Battalion anthology.

Happy first 3 day weekend of 2018!

Superwoman Vol. 1: Who Killed Superwoman...

A good attempt that just doesn't quite get it done. This is one of DC's second tier books for me. Still it's worth checking out

The sentiment behind this was lovely. Love is Love is an anthology comic book of short pieces honoring the memories of those killed at the Pulse shooting with all proceeds donated to the survivors. And it has some beautiful works in there celebrating love, community, and their memories.

But I felt some of the pieces really didn’t work. Some felt jarring in tone. For a book that seemed like it wanted to be celebrating and honoring love and the memories of those lost, it didn’t seem right to have so many depictions of them dying in the floor in pools of their own blood. That just seemed like a horrible way to remember them for this particular project. There was one piece that when on a rant about guns. Another piece depicted Zeus as a super lover who would be so upset by this, ignoring the fact that the “lovers” Zeus was shown with in the piece were all his rape victims that he tricked into sleeping with him. None of those works really struck me as celebrating love or honoring the dead.

Luckily, there were plenty of works that did. There was a beautiful, heartbreaking piece depicting the mother who was killed there dancing with her son at the club after beating cancer. I loved that her memory was honored by showing her dancing with her son instead of her dead body. There was another wonderful piece depicting a phone call between a son and his parents as they asked him to be careful, but also be proud and unafraid to be himself. There were pieces that just showed couples being happy together. Those were the works that had me choking up.

And as a superhero fan who knows just how much they can mean to a person, I was glad to see Batwoman, Harley Quinn, Poison Ivy, Apollo, and Midnighter show up several times throughout the anthology, as well as lesser known queer characters like Tremor, Catman, Scandal, Porcelain, and a number of others. There was also a piece featuring the characters from the Archie comics and a piece of artwork of the main Harry Potter characters.

While not every piece worked for me, there were enough in the anthology that did. I wish the tragedy that brought about this anthology had never happened, but it is heartening to see so many come together to try to make something positive and to help the survivors.