Let me share with you… I loved reading the “Love Is…” cartoons, so when I ran across this article it brought flashbacks of great times.
The story behind the “LOVE IS…” cartoons.
A vestige of the 1970s with little naked couple always doing lovey-dovey things.
New Zealander Kim Grove fell in love with Italian Roberto Casali and would leave him these little lovey-dovey cartoons.
Kim found that her husband had saved her love notes to him and had been showing them to his friends. Roberto had also shown the cartoons to The Los Angeles Times, who picked up the panel for publication. “Love is…” became a syndicated cartoon on January 5, 1970. It caught on like wildfire, spreading to papers in 50 countries in 25 languages. The comic was a windfall to the merchandise industry in sales of mugs, t-shirts, calendars and much more.
They married, she turned her doodles into a strip, they had two sons, all seemed perfect. But then they learned Roberto had incurable cancer. He died just four years into their marriage, and Kim was one of the first women to use sperm her husband had frozen to have another child, two years after his death. She had to go to the press with how and what she did since the procedure was so new and confusing, and she wanted it known that this son was her late husband’s child.
Kim Grove Casali did not have a long life herself, dying of cancer in 1997 at just 55. One of her sons helps maintain the comic.
I may still roll my eyes when I see the little naked Love Is… people, but now I’ll also be thinking of the little nude dudes as a young couple who had only less than a decade together before they were torn apart.
Catch ‘Love Is’… daily
http://www.tmsfeatures.com/comics/comic-panels/love-is/Love-Is.html
Daisy Says: Love is… intoxicating, without the hangover.
