If you missed the excellent comic book series Groupies from writer Helen Mullane and artist Tula Lotay, well, great news: it’s collected, in stores today from Mad Cave Studios. And to whet your appetite for the sexy, fem-focused horror comic, we’ve got Mullane’s exclusive limerence list for you, right here, right now.
…No, not “limericks.” Limerence is “a state of being infatuated or obsessed with another person,” which ties into the fan-focused story of Groupies. The list below includes some of the best comic books ever and some of the best movies ever. So if you’re looking to complement your Groupies read in order to get obsessed even more, read on.
HANG-UPS AND HEARTBREAKS
By Helen Mullane
In Groupies, love – doomed, hopeless and unrequited – is the main driver of the action for some of the girls. We’ve all felt romantically hopeless at one time or another, and some of my favourite films and comics have been created to try to understand the very particular pain of loving someone who doesn’t love you anymore, or who maybe never loved you at all.
So here are a few classic comics and movies that deal with limerence, doomed love and tragic yearning.
LOVE AND ROCKETS, THE GIRL FROM H.O.P.P.E.R.S. by Jaime Hernandez
Any volume of this classic long-running series by the Hernandez brothers is essential and utterly joyous reading. It’s full of complicated relationships, as people change and they float in and out of each other’s lives in a very true way. It’s like the coolest soap opera ever but with added magical realism and absurdism.
Here we explore the love triangle between Hopey, Maggie and Ray that kick-starts the latter’s relationship. The heart wants what the heart wants, and sometimes it’s inevitable that somebody’s heart gets crushed. The off-again, on-again romance of Maggie and Ray is a masterclass in how to write love that is sometimes joyous, but often hurts.
WILSON by Daniel Clowes
Wilson is painfully lonely, yet also so misanthropic and outwardly annoying that one cannot imagine a world where things get better for him. In this wonderfully singular comic, Clowes (the genius behind Ghost World and Monica) paints a portrait of a man in a series of one-page gag strips drawn in a variety of style. We see both Wilson’s inner and outer world and the result a read that is both painful and hilarious.
LAURA DEAN KEEPS BREAKING UP WITH ME by Mariko Tamaki and Rosemary Valero-O’Connell
In this charming YA graphic novel, Frederica “Freddy” Riley is embroiled in a toxic, on-again off-again relationship with her perfect girl, Laura Dean. The relationship is one-sided, and Laura, who Freddy perceives as popular, gorgeous and out of her league, keeps breaking up with her, hurting her again and again. The book explores the pain of limerance, the melancholic longing for a person who’s just not that into you.
JENNIFER’S BODY
A story of queer love masquerading as a titillating piece of B-movie fluff, Jennifer’s Body was unfairly reviled on release. Audiences in 2009 were just not ready to receive its satire and feminist bite. The voiceover tells us that Needy and Jennifer are best friends, so far so high school, but the camera gives us the truth. There’s a depth of feeling there, a love that goes beyond the platonic. When Jennifer is assaulted by a hot band, brutally but unsuccessfully sacrificed to a demon, she comes back different. Needy has to contend with this new, monstrous version of her friend, as she goes on a vengeful rampage against teenage boys.
THE LOVED ONES
High school horror doesn’t get much more demented than the Ozzie prom night classic The Loved Ones. When Brent refuses class oddball Lola’s invitation to the school dance, she doesn’t take the rejection very well. To put it lightly. Cue brutal, but sometimes starkly funny and often surprisingly empathetic, mayhem.
ALL OVER ME
This sweet and earnest coming-of-age movie tells the story of inseparable best friends Claude and Ellen. When Ellen gets into a toxic relationship with a local drug dealer, Claude realises that she’s actually in love with her. As events spiral beyond the girl’s control, Claude has to find a way to move beyond a friend who doesn’t reciprocate her feelings. All Over Me was made in the thick of the Riot Girl era, and is full of that angst and rebellion.
THE LIVING END
No one does disillusionment and nihilism quite like Greg Araki. An apparent lover of an unmet romantic yearning, Araki’s films are full of love triangles and dashed hopes. The Living End is a powerhouse road movie, following two young gay men both of whom have AIDs in the early 90s, a seeming death sentence. Trauma-bonded and deeply in lust, the guys go on a deadly road trip and their path is marked by violence – clashing with people they meet, each other and themselves. I love the ambiguity of the ending and the absolute refusal to make their kind of not-really-love story palatable to a general audience.
500 DAYS OF SUMMER
The ultimate limerance modern classic in which Tom, a romantic and unfulfilled young greeting card writer becomes deeply enamoured with his colleague Summer. Heedless of her warnings that she isn’t looking for anything serious and just wants to have fun, Tom jumps head first into a relationship and is sure she is falling in love. But Tom is deceiving himself and willfully ignoring every sign of his paramour’s disinterest. A brilliant movie buoyed by a great script, creative visuals and fantastic performances. 500 Days of Summer has become a verb among my friends, eg “you 500 Days of Summered Yourself” when a friend has thrown themselves into a romance with someone obviously disinterested.
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