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I Feel Love
Five groundbreaking stories that explore the dark and twisted underbelly of love
Love makes the world go round. It can also turn your heart as black as coal. In the much anticipated follow up to their Eisner-nominated I Feel Machine, Julian Hanshaw and Krent Able curate a series of dystopian, satirical and psychological short fictions from artists Anya Davidson, Cat Sims, Benjamin Marra, and Kelsey Wroten that explore love’s dark, twisted underbelly, and offer a much-needed tonic to everything that is sweet, cloying, and conventional.
As unflinching as it is honest, I Feel Love questions the one emotion that is meant to make us feel good—but often does the exact opposite. This is a book for those who have loved and lost in equal measures.
Love makes the world go round. It can also turn your heart as black as coal. In the much anticipated follow up to their Eisner-nominated I Feel Machine, Julian Hanshaw and Krent Able curate a series of dystopian, satirical and psychological short fictions from artists Anya Davidson, Cat Sims, Benjamin Marra, and Kelsey Wroten that explore love’s dark, twisted underbelly, and offer a much-needed tonic to everything that is sweet, cloying, and conventional.
As unflinching as it is honest, I Feel Love questions the one emotion that is meant to make us feel good—but often does the exact opposite. This is a book for those who have loved and lost in equal measures.
152 pages, Paperback
First published March 30, 2021
1 person is currently reading
48 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
October 15, 2023
The art style is amazing throughout, however the stories themselves fall a bit flat. They are hard to follow and the authors don’t really leave you with much to consider after reading. I enjoyed the short story element and the stories were very distinct, but with the distinct nature of the stories, it lacked cohesion. If you’re looking for a really twisted, quick read with cool art and you’re not concerned with story, this definitely fits the bill.
December 20, 2021
I Feel Love is a new graphic novel filled with short stories about, you probably guessed it, love. However, this isn’t a book that explores cute and fluffy feeling of falling in love, or about how wonderful it is spending your life with someone. I Feel Love explores the darker side of what is one of the most powerful emotions, and offers what is at times a pretty disturbing anthology.
Full Review - https://setthetape.com/2021/04/01/i-f...
Full Review - https://setthetape.com/2021/04/01/i-f...
April 16, 2021
I Feel Love is a new graphic novel filled with short stories about, you probably guessed it, love. However, this isn’t a book that explores cute and fluffy feeling of falling in love, or about how wonderful it is spending your life with someone. I Feel Love explores the darker side of what is one of the most powerful emotions, and offers what is at times a pretty disturbing anthology. The book contains six stories, written by a variety of authors, each of which comes with its own unique voice and very different and varying art styles.
‘Teen Swamp Monster’ is written and drawn by Benjamin Marra, and follows the exploits of Ronny, a young man who’s being sent off to experience a weekend of college life by his family. Ronny hardly speaks throughout the book, and it’s pretty clear from the start that he’s a nervous young man who’s easily dominated by those around him.
Arriving on campus he’s desperate for female attention, but is completely unsure of how to go about getting it. When he buys some items from a local store, some synthetic weed and a collection of weird totems and crystals, he goes out into the swamp to get high, where he’s transformed into a strange swamp monster that’s able to seduce women with his pheromones.
The story is odd to say the least, and it really focuses on the isolation and social anxiety that Ronny faces. Ronny doesn’t even really share the panel with people, and hardly speaks throughout, and it’s not until his transformation into a horrific monster that he’s able to achieve his goals of being intimate with a woman. It’s a story where I’m not sure what the message is, whether it’s encouraging people to open up more and be more outgoing lest you become so isolated, or if it’s trying to say that an obsession with wanting companionship will turn you into a monster, as some kind of commentary on incels. Whatever the underlying message is it makes for a strange first entry in the book.
‘I Want To Watch’ by Julian Hanshaw is about a middle-aged man and his wife. The story begins with the man travelling on the underground, seemingly getting himself worked up over going and asking another man something. We don’t know what that is yet, though it becomes apparent later in the story what he was trying to do.
Soon after this, he and his wife, Anna, travel abroad for a holiday. After unsuccessfully trying to encourage his wife to go topless we discover the man has a fetish for wanting to watch his wife sleep with another man, which he decides to bring up with her, proposing they use their holiday as the perfect opportunity to do so. The ending of the story sees the man left broken and dejected, and seems to be making a point about having to be careful when discussing your fetishes with your partner, and about making clear boundaries and distinctions or you could risk harming your relationship, yet doesn’t really make this clear enough or come out with a solid conclusion.
These are only two of the stories in the collection, but the two that were the clearest to understand, yet even then I wasn’t entirely sure what I was supposed to think, or what the creators were trying to say about love or its destructive qualities. Other stories in the book are even more abstract, and even out and out bizarre, with ‘Black Balloon’ seeming to make no sense whatsoever to me. I wouldn’t even have been able to tell you that most of these stories were about love if they weren’t in this collection.
If you’re looking for a book that’s going to examine love, how it can be a dark emotion that is destructive, as well as something that most people crave and want then I wouldn’t really recommend this book. However, if you’re looking for bizarre and twisted horror tales that don’t always have to make sense or explain everything this might just be worth checking out.
‘Teen Swamp Monster’ is written and drawn by Benjamin Marra, and follows the exploits of Ronny, a young man who’s being sent off to experience a weekend of college life by his family. Ronny hardly speaks throughout the book, and it’s pretty clear from the start that he’s a nervous young man who’s easily dominated by those around him.
Arriving on campus he’s desperate for female attention, but is completely unsure of how to go about getting it. When he buys some items from a local store, some synthetic weed and a collection of weird totems and crystals, he goes out into the swamp to get high, where he’s transformed into a strange swamp monster that’s able to seduce women with his pheromones.
The story is odd to say the least, and it really focuses on the isolation and social anxiety that Ronny faces. Ronny doesn’t even really share the panel with people, and hardly speaks throughout, and it’s not until his transformation into a horrific monster that he’s able to achieve his goals of being intimate with a woman. It’s a story where I’m not sure what the message is, whether it’s encouraging people to open up more and be more outgoing lest you become so isolated, or if it’s trying to say that an obsession with wanting companionship will turn you into a monster, as some kind of commentary on incels. Whatever the underlying message is it makes for a strange first entry in the book.
‘I Want To Watch’ by Julian Hanshaw is about a middle-aged man and his wife. The story begins with the man travelling on the underground, seemingly getting himself worked up over going and asking another man something. We don’t know what that is yet, though it becomes apparent later in the story what he was trying to do.
Soon after this, he and his wife, Anna, travel abroad for a holiday. After unsuccessfully trying to encourage his wife to go topless we discover the man has a fetish for wanting to watch his wife sleep with another man, which he decides to bring up with her, proposing they use their holiday as the perfect opportunity to do so. The ending of the story sees the man left broken and dejected, and seems to be making a point about having to be careful when discussing your fetishes with your partner, and about making clear boundaries and distinctions or you could risk harming your relationship, yet doesn’t really make this clear enough or come out with a solid conclusion.
These are only two of the stories in the collection, but the two that were the clearest to understand, yet even then I wasn’t entirely sure what I was supposed to think, or what the creators were trying to say about love or its destructive qualities. Other stories in the book are even more abstract, and even out and out bizarre, with ‘Black Balloon’ seeming to make no sense whatsoever to me. I wouldn’t even have been able to tell you that most of these stories were about love if they weren’t in this collection.
If you’re looking for a book that’s going to examine love, how it can be a dark emotion that is destructive, as well as something that most people crave and want then I wouldn’t really recommend this book. However, if you’re looking for bizarre and twisted horror tales that don’t always have to make sense or explain everything this might just be worth checking out.
July 18, 2021
There’s currently only one other written review of this anthology on Goodreads so I wanted to write a few quick words about I Feel Love: it’s an excellent collection of weird stories. If you’re not a fan of underground/indie comics, it might not be for you; its goal is to be subversive and unusual, to tell stories that you wouldn’t find elsewhere. And it succeeds! Each of the six stories is visually distinct from the others, and each touches on different themes (barring the fact that both the first and last stories involve people turning into plant monsters, though to very different ends). Anyway, I recommend this anthology to comix fans everywhere!
January 5, 2022
Totally bonkers, didn’t really understand half of the stories, need to read again. 6 stories of love, so they say, all by different artists/writers. I liked a lot of the artwork, it’s why the cover appealed to me, and I like strange off the wall stories, which these certainly are. However I appreciate even a small hook into the story, that makes it clear roughly what it’s about, so that you can mentally refer back to it if you get lost. I felt fairly lost in most of the 6 stories, but, I still liked it, wish it was a tad longer
December 31, 2024
Picked up on a whim not really understanding the difference between ‘graphic novels’ and ‘comix’. This is my first exposure to the latter. 2 stars feels a bit harsh as I’m definitely not the ideal audience for this one but judging the stories on their ‘storyness’, the weaker ones are quite weak and bring down the others. I Want To Watch felt like the most fulsome story to me.
July 9, 2023
Six short stories in this graphic novel, all have dark themes involving love but mostly lust. I likes that each short story was a different art style but I was confused half the time while reading. ‘Hurt/Comfort’ was my favorite story which is about a mom that discovers fan fiction.
February 20, 2022
I thought I liked weird comics, but maybe I'm just too sober for this shit.
October 8, 2022
भन्नाट है एकदम।
बेसिरपैर की तिकड़मी कहानियाँ है। सस्ते नशे करने का प्रभाव लगता है।
बेसिरपैर की तिकड़मी कहानियाँ है। सस्ते नशे करने का प्रभाव लगता है।
July 19, 2023
Eclectic collection of graphic shorts exploring themes of lust and love.
March 1, 2025
zbiór bardzo ładnych komiksów o miłości. podobało mi się, jak wiele z nich miało wątki horrorowe/sci-fi.
September 25, 2022
Short stories that mostly go weird in an experimental but not interesting way.
March 7, 2022
it was a pretty good book i enjoyed it and i hope to read many more like this in my life
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews