How To Love - Hardcover

Six members of the Israeli collective of comics artists Actus here offer diverse perspectives on love in all its varieties. Several follow the Actus modus of reflecting distinctively Israeli concerns. In Mira Friedmann’s Independence Day, set in 1966 Jerusalem, a 12-year-old girl rashly crosses the barrier to the Jordanian side. Rutu Modan’s Your Number One Fan chronicles an Israeli would-be singer’s ill-fated gig at a Jewish cultural center in Sheffield, England. Most essay greater universality. Batia Kolton depicts a young girl’s fascination with the love life of an older neighbor who accompanies her family on a trip to the beach. Yirmi Pinkus shows snapshots of life and love early one morning in Tel Aviv. The six artists’ visual approaches are varied. Several use a more realistic variation of the French-Belgian ligne claire (clear line) style. David Polonsky and Itzik Rennert offer prose descriptions of exotic and extreme forms of love, each accompanied by an illustration; if that may not genuinely be comics . . . well, all’s fair in love. --Gordon Flagg