They say true love is eternal, spanning all of space and time. Writer Steve Orlando and artist Giopota have put that very notion to the test with their new book, Sainted Love.
Published via Vault Comics, Sainted Love follows a seemingly mismatched couple, the brilliant scientist Malcolm Irina and the bare knuckle boxer John Wolf, in 1907 New York City. One day, the lovers must use the former’s functioning time machine to escape the insidious Detective Felt. As the pair leap time periods, they “encounter famous queer people throughout history and fight back against all who would see their names and love erased.” Equal parts thoughtful and thrilling, it’s a poignant story about the power of love to change lives and society alike.
Sainted Love #1 is due out this week (September 27). In the lead up, Orlando was kind enough to answer a few questions, including the book’s larger goals/objectives, notions of representation and erasure, identifying with his heroes, and the climb toward lasting societal change.
Sainted Love #1’s main cover by Giopota. Courtesy of Vault Comics.
AIPT: I think the book comes at a time of increased gay and trans erasure by certain groups. Is this a reaction to the idea that progress has been made on that front but as a society we’re foolishly back-sliding?
Steve Orlando: The truth is, we were planning this already when the recent efforts to erase marginalized folks of all kinds from history and society recently escalated. And that’s because the base line urge to deemphasize marginalized communities has always been there—and that doesn’t just go for LGBTQ+ folks. We already had film adaptations deemphasizing or altering queer content in adaptation or translation (Sailor Moon and the Interview with the Vampire movie adaptation). We already had people like Alan Turing or J. Edgar Hoover having queer aspects of their lives edited or left to innuendo in the telling of their stories. Good or bad, their legacies weren’t being depicted with confidence and clarity. So, this type of thing has always been there, going back to stories of LGBTQ+ martyrs deep in history—which is something we’ll be exploring in the book of course!
AIPT: Why does the dynamic between Malcolm (brainy scientist) and John (rugged bare-knuckle fighter) work so well? Do you reference your own relationships or romantic past in these instances?
SO: I think it works, WHEN it works, because their approaches are different but complementary. Wolf works on instinct—he doesn’t need everything to make sense, he trusts his gut in the ring. Irina works on logic—he needs things to have an explanation, he needs everything to make sense as he defines sense. When they’re in synch, they approach life, and problems, from two angles that unite in the solution. But when they don’t? They’ve got the hardest time getting their perspectives across to each other since they both come from worlds that are alien to the other.
As for my own past—I think that’s certainly something that plays in, but we’re all putting our experiences and lives into our work, even if it’s being done so through a different lens depending on the book. The mandate to young writers is often “go live.” Go find something to say. Go experience life. So things I’ve been through are absolutely infused into this book—that’s how these comics get done best!
Courtesy of Vault Comics.
AIPT: Similarly, is there one of our two dashing leads that you identify with more? Or perhaps neither in any capacity?
SO: I think, honestly, that the answer depends on the time—some days I’m absolutely Irina, but when logic fails and things don’t make sense, I absolutely become Wolf. But they’re both stubborn guys! And I feel like it’s safe to say that’s a trait that I’d share with them all the time.
AIPT: Can we talk about Giopota’s art? It feels playful and intense and also facilitates the book’s “timeless” quality and history-hopping.
SO: Gio is beyond an asset! This book wouldn’t exist without him—and I don’t just mean visually. Story wise, character wise, the world of Sainted Love was heavily influenced by Gio’s take on the initial pitch. That’s the beauty of collaboration! I know Gio is a master, I know he can put this story on the page with the utmost skill—and it’s his excitement and life that reverberated back and helped me better understand the final version of Sainted Love and the characters, places, and adventures that it’s about to show everyone.
AIPT: As an extension of that last question, does that specific style allow you to do things you couldn’t with another artist perhaps?
SO: I think, even though this might feel like a cop out type of answer, I think the answer is yes, of course. But that’s also true for every single book, when it’s a true collaboration with give and take, trust and respect—pride, of course. Pride in the work. Each person involved in a creative team is a unique creative factor, so the book that comes out of that creative machine is always going to do things only that exact group of creators could do.
Courtesy of Vault Comics.
AIPT: Were you worried or hesitant at all about this being an 18+ book? (I’m thinking of the wheelbarrow full of “transformational devices,” the bathtub scene.) Yet it almost seems like the subject matter demands that sort of approach.
SO: Not at all! Were the fact that we’re doing an NSFW/+18 book been some sort of tactic, or a bait and switch, then I wouldn’t have just been hesitant. I wouldn’t have done it. But we’ve been up front about what this is from moment one. And in it being a big, bold, +18 LGBTQ+ adventure story that pulls no punches with its erotic moments, Sainted Love itself becomes an act of provocation and subversion. But that’s not just why we did it—if we’re doing a book about fighting back about queer erasure in history, fighting the forces against us throughout time, we would not, we could not, give one inch when it comes to the lives of our heroes, sex lives or otherwise. But I have no hesitation about that here—because we’re very clear that this is what the book is, and who it’s for.
AIPT: I love the way sex is portrayed here — romantic and grounded. Does nailing that (pun intended) feel really important as a shorthand for their relationship?
SO: I absolutely would say yes—after all, just like someone’s character comes through when they’re fighting, someone’s character comes through when they’re fucking. So our sex scenes needed to be real, they needed to be true and raw. Like we said above—these are characters we’re proud of, deserving of the love and passion real people get. And that meant being real about what goes down with them between the sheets—and how it goes down.
AIPT: Less of a question and more of a statement: I love the way that Thomas Edison is regarded/treated in issue #1. A+, no notes.
SO: Hey—I get it! History’s written by the victors, right? In essence, what Edison did to his competition, smearing and discrediting them, is a nice microcosm of what the Pilgrims are doing to queer exceptionalism throughout history.
Courtesy of Vault Comics.
AIPT: I’m curious about a character like Detective Felt — he’s so obviously awful and delightfully easy to dislike. But is having that kind of singular big bad a form of wish fulfillment, given there’s groups and swathes of society with regressive attitudes?
SO: I wouldn’t say it’s wish fulfillment. I’d say it’s realistic, unfortunately. Folks need only read the news, exist on the internet, or dare to appear at a public LGBTQ+ event to see that if anything, Detective Felt’s words are tame. The overton window is open so wide it’s probably broken forever.
And the truth is, what appears to be a singular aggressor or singular big bad are just outgrowths, tendrils growing like mushrooms in shit that sprout up from an overall toxic movement. And like those shit mushrooms, you need to dig beneath the soil to see how they’re connected. People like Felt aren’t disconnected from the swathes—they’re sprouting up from it like its bigoted loam.
AIPT: Speaking of big bads, what can you tease about the Pilgrims here? Is there some real-life element to this decidedly shady group (I’m woefully understudied in this area)?
SO: The Pilgrims have an attitude that’s certainly based on current movements looking to take away LGBTQ+ rights, silence our stories and keep us scared. But it’s no one group. Of course, some faith organizations behave this way—and others of course do not. Some governments behave this way—others do not. Some families act this way—others do not. The Pilgrims are the extension of the bad faith “don’t shove it down our throats” argument, when “shoving it down” their throats its merely daring to exist in our honest forms. They’re the avatars of the idea that LGBTQ+ folks are things to hide, things to be kept out of the light—and that’s a concept that’s risen and fallen numerous times throughout history.
Courtesy of Vault Comics.
AIPT: The book’s meant to have a certain educational component as the duo “encounter famous queer people” across time. Is that difficult to balance that in a book like this? Why is that element important enough here?
SO: Honestly? It sounds trite, but the story is what’s most important here. The educational component is more about where the characters go, who they meet, the challenges face—the educational component is, hopefully, a spark that lights when you meet people from different times that were early LGBTQ+ pioneers. And then as Sainted Love rolls on, you hopefully also want to know more about these folks and their lives, and track down more about their stories. And really, to me, this is an ode to the comics I grew up on. So many of the concepts I taught myself about as a kid and in my teens were because I first encountered them in a comic book—usually Grant Morrison’s JLA. This follows the same tradition—the story is paramount, but hopefully you meet new people along the way that you’re excited to learn more about.
AIPT: I hope this isn’t too spoiler-y, but Mac and John don’t arrive at the same time — is that going to cause some tension or turmoil down the road? Or do the lovers already have enough on their plate to deal with?
SO: Oh, it’ll absolutely cause tension. Once the raw passion of reuniting wears off, the same tensions and fights from 1907 are going to spring back. And honestly, with all the ways Wolf sees that Irina has changed in the intervening time, it’ll aggravate Wolf even more when he sees how Irina hasn’t changed. It puts Irina’s biases, and Wolf’s flashpoints, in even more stark of a contrast.
AIPT: As a straight man, I can admit that consuming gay sex scenes can still feel complicated, even as I recognize it’s just some misguided, knee-jerk reaction. Is there some aspect of this book written for or to folks like me, and to shock them/us into dropping these silly notions or needless unease?
SO: If anything, yes—the hope is to drop the unease. But not by shocking readers into doing so. The hope is that readers from outside the LGBTQ+ community see the beauty in queer sex in the same way they see it in their own, in all its eroticism, but also its fun and absurdity. I have to admit as someone interested in people regardless of gender, I’ve never had the knee jerk reaction—it’s all beautiful to me, it’s all fascinating, and it’s all absurd.
Courtesy of Vault Comics.
I think, I hope, that that’s something folks can in time bond over—the players may change, but sex is fun, sex is funny, and it’s something to relax and bond over and about. And even if you’re someone on the asexual side of life, I think then the unease folks might feel witnessing a new variation of human sexuality is still a point of connection, a point of understanding and humanization, if everyone involved is open to the thought of that.
AIPT: Why the interest in the time travel trope? Does this book show the opposite of that cliched idea of “everything was so much better in the past or present” by showing how we’re all sort of connected in this very weird life across time and space?
SO: It absolutely does—and it values perspective. Wolf, for example, finds the 1950s are vastly better than 1907. But that’s limited by his perspective and how little he’s seen of it. And even so, when Irina promises him there’s still a long way to go, Irina himself still hasn’t figured out how to accept Wolf’s bisexuality. He’s explaining the problem while being part of it! Time travel here helps us show that progress isn’t a straight line, and that the fight never ends. The people that won’t want us to exist and achieve are insidious, so we must be as persistent and unrelenting—more so, honestly—than they’re insidious, if we want to continue the climb towards progress.
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