The Reddest Rose: Romantic Love from the Ancient Greeks to Reality TV

In The Reddest Rose: Romantic Love from the Ancient Greeks to Reality TV, cartoonist Maja Flink traces the cultural history of romantic love from its classical origins to its modern pop-culture incarnations, all in a single, ambitious issue from Fantagraphics. Published in 2023, this one-shot comic blends scholarship with visual storytelling, offering a thoughtful, accessible overview of how love has been idealized, commodified, and contested across centuries. Flink’s crisp, expressive artwork anchors a narrative that matters for its concise, witty synthesis of a vast subject—a standout example of the non-fiction comic as a vessel for big ideas.