Behind The Love: Love Everlasting's pitch

Feb 02, 2022

Introducing, Behind The Love, our series about the making of Love Everlasting ! And what better way to start than going to the roots of the project, the pitch.

But before that, a quick update on the exclusive mini-prints availability. Over half are gone since yesterday, so if you are a free subscriber and want your copy, all you have to do is…

Also! A reminder that our process posts (which includes this Behind The Love series) are free this week to give you all a chance to get familiar with our content, but will only be available to paying subscribers after that. The comic itself will stay free, though.

Okay, back to our pitch. Tom?

Hey! Tom coming on here to introduce this pitch I wrote.

So, I write a lot of mini-series, which means I do a lot of pitches. For those of you in the Love tier and the Everlasting tier, I’ll do a more in depth post about exactly how I write these at some later date, and I’ll actually post a few more examples (for things like Mister Miracle or Vision or Human Target).

BUT to give a quick overview, my basic structure is always lead with a story: tell the reader what your first issue is, how it sets up a world, how that world gets twisted in a way that demands attention, that hangs off a cliff. Once they’ve (hopefully) bought into that, pull the camera way back and give them a few paragraphs where you talk about your ambitions for the whole thing. That’s it. It’s not rocket science. Hook them with a hook, tell them why the hook is awesome, and get out fast—never more than a page.

So here’s that formula at work for Love Everlasting, a series I couldn’t be more proud of.

The pitch

A new ongoing series from Tom King and Elsa Charretier

“Doubt thou that the sun is fire, doubt that that the sun does move, doubt truth to be a liar, but never doubt that I love." –Hamlet, William Shakespeare

Joan Peterson is crying in bed. It’s 1958 and not only can’t she find love, she can’t even find a job! Her roommate, Marla has an idea. “My boyfriend, George needs a new secretary! You can work for him!” Joan is overjoyed; the work is rewarding and square-jawed clean-cut George is so kind, so caring, so clean-cut, so square-jawed—and soon Joan is head over heels. But what about Marla!? But then, just as all seems lost, Marla tells Joan she’s fallen for someone else, and George tells Joan he’s fallen for her and wants to get married, and Joan kisses him and

Joan Peterson is crying in bed. It’s 1972 and her parents want her to marry someone rich, but she’s in love with Kit, a singer in Greenwich Village! (wait) She sneaks out of the house, drives downtown, and watches square-jawed clean-cut Kit perform. (where’s George) Afterwards, Kit runs from her—but why? (we were getting married) Finally, Kit confesses: he’s not a beatnik; he’s the heir to an oil fortune. (who are you) He’s just trying to prove he can make it on his own. (I was a secretary) Will she still love him, will she still marry him after he lied!? (I don’t understand)Yes! Yes of course! Joan kisses him and

Joan Peterson is crying in bed. It’s 1881 and Chad, the clean-cut square-jawed cow hand she grew up with whom she’s always loved is away with the herd. Now a new boy, clean-cut square-jawed Bill

(WAIT!)

Joan Peterson is running through countryside away from Chad and Bill and her house and her parents and everything she’s always and never known and she’s thinking about George and Kit and Chad and Bill and she doesn’t understand and she wants to be free and run and she wants George and Kit and Chad and Bill and who is she and what is this and there’s a man in a mask in front of her and he has a gun and he says, “Love is Everlasting.” And he pulls the trigger. And she hears the bang. And

Joan Peterson is crying bed…

Love Everlasting is an epic, mind-blowing series of hope, death, and rebirth set in a world as frighteningly fantastical as any found beyond the stars or after the apocalypse: The Romance Comics of the 50s, 60s, and 70s. In this blood-rose tinted reality, Joan Peterson slowly discovers that she is trapped in a seemingly endless cycle--a problem to be solved, a man to marry—and every time she makes it, falls in love, kisses him, she disappears into another teary saga. She needs to find her way out, find who she is, what this world is. To escape she must deconstruct her stories and reconstruct her identity.

Romance comics sold millions of copies. They are a reflection of America’s ongoing obsession with finding the right, white utopia to which we might all conform. This comicis an examination of the perversity of this obsession, of the damage done, the hearts broken, the lives lost in pursuit of the beautifully impossible: of love everlasting. This is not just a mystery to be solved; it is an ongoing adventure, an exploration of the need for love. As Watchmen did for superheroes and Walking Dead did for horror, Love Everlasting will use use the tropes of romance to explore the heart of humanity.

There’s the whole of it. Hope you liked it! It’s not long, but it gets to the point. And just from that, we got…well we can’t talk about all of that yet, but the above very small pitch led to some very big things coming up. Watch this space for those announcements…