FANTAGRAPHICS AT 50! In retrospect there’s an added layer of poignancy to writer Salomé Parent-Rachdi and artist Deloupy’s Love and Desire in the Promised Land: The Private Lives of Israelis and Palestinians that paradoxically somehow manages to be both haunting in its understatement yet overwhelming in its harsh reality. Featuring real life accounts collected before the October 7th attacks, and the subsequent genocide in Gaza, Love and Desire in the Promised Land is a journalistic exploration of romantic relationships set against the backdrop of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
It is no surprise then, given these stories were all brought to the comics page before the latter part of 2023, that there’s a scene-setting introduction and prologue to the book giving context to the production timeline of Love and Desire in the Promised Land. The final paragraph of the introduction is particularly affecting. Talking about Rami, a “fixer” she met in Gaza whose story features in the book, Parent-Rachdi tells us “Every day since October 8, 2023, Rami has started his day by sending the same WhatsApp message to his French-speaking colleagues and journalist friends: ‘Hello Friends, still alive.’” A simple yet devastating reminder of how events have escalated in the region.
What we have here is graphic journalism via personal testimonies that look at love and relationships in the midst of geopolitical upheaval, sometimes placed within the boundaries of cultural heritage and sometimes breaking through those divides in ways that may feel unexpected. Lana, a woman living in Tel Aviv, who hides her Palestinian background when dating; Lucy and Tsahi, a celebrity couple whose cross-cultural relationship is played out on a more public stage; Avi, brought up in a strict and repressive orthodox Jewish family without an understanding of what a loving relationship entailed; and Mohammed, a young gay Muslim, struggling for acceptance in Gaza.
Some of the entries here are, of course, harrowing to read. Fathiya, for example, who goes to the most incredible lengths to get pregnant by her imprisoned husband. Others are surprising but emphasise the sheer humanity that Parent-Rachdi and Deloupy are trying to capture, like Samira, a Palestinian woman in a lesbian relationship with an Israeli soldier. But what is so successful in these pages is a determination to bring so many diverse accounts of lives lived in the shadow of conflict and violence together, and to explore the traditions and cultural influences that factor into such a primal human experience as love.
Deloupy’s art, with its careful colour choices, emphasises the very human nature of each tale through a mix of realism, powerful visual characterisation, and sidesteps into representational symbolism where appropriate. Love and Desire in the Promised Land: The Private Lives of Israelis and Palestinians is a testament to the power of graphic reportage and a very different approach to comics coverage of the region and its recent history.
Salomé Parent-Rachdi (W), Deloupy (A), Jenna Allen (T) • Fantagraphics Books, $24.99
Buy online from Gosh! Comics here
Review by Andy Oliver
Fantagraphics at 50 Month runs through August at Broken Frontier. You can see articles as they’re published in one tagged list here.
