Elijah and Azuu

Author notes

#1219 Earth Angel: The M Word

Inkmonkey

on March 18, 2007

Love is a fascinating concept. If you were to ask 10 people what "fear" or "happiness" meant, you'd likely get 10 answers that more or less mean the same thing. Love, however, seems much harder to define. Personally, I don't know what love is; not really. I've been in love, sure, but I don't know what it is. I worry sometimes that my feelings of "love" over the years have really been simply misplaced lust, and in a way that thought scares me. It stains my happy memories of the women I've shared that experience with. It's almost easy to call it "love" when she's right there, but it's almost sickening when I think fondly back to her, and the first thought is sex. Granted that may be because I haven't really had time for "getting down" since school started, but I hate the idea that a woman I've loved was, even subconsciously, just a place to put my penis.

One thing that surprises me is the stuff that just happens in the comic as a result of me trying to keep the characters and their world true to themselves. I hadn't realized it until it had already been into contact for some time, but the Heaven and Hell of this comic seem to both be places where "love" is forbidden. Of course, this is in opposing ways; Heaven forbids expression of physical love, but encourages a sort of "all encompassing" love. Not for an individual, of course, but simply a love of "being". Selflessness is the ultimate goal of Heaven for its denizens (despite some of those denizens' best efforts.) Hell, on the other, clearly endorses the "physical act" (it's literally a job down there), but the concept of caring about someone or something just for the sake of caring about it is wrong. In a way the "ownership" system is, for many demons, simply a way of justifying their feelings.

Buuuut, that's just my take on things.