Mad Cave Studios has announced a new romance/science fiction hybrid called Love Me: A Romance Story, which will arrive in stores this spring. It’s about a robot cabbie named JoJo who falls in love with Gilda, who is “entangled with the mafia.” Bulletproof heart, meet hollowpoint smile.
The story is by writer Francesca Perillo and artist Stefano Cardoselli. Cardoselli wrote and drew Don’t Spit in the Wind at Mad Cave last year, and if you haven’t checked that title out, I highly recommend it. They’re joined by colorist Lorenzo Scaramella and letterer Buddy Beaudoin.
“Love Me is the story everyone can read: it’s about possibility, hope and diversity. It talks about the ability to wait for and recognize the love that comes after personal fulfillment,” Perillo said. “In fact, if you are fulfilled with your life, grateful for the work you have achieved, the conquests you have made and the friends you have chosen, despite the difficulties, you can leave room for true feelings even if they are scary and put you face to face with great challenges and strange emotions. Love me is the story of all those who have been able to wait for true love, in the seat of a taxi or at the table in a bar just like what happened to me.”
Here’s how Mad Cave describes the story:
New York City, sometime in the far future, where robots like JoJo have taken over the tasks humans no longer want to perform…like driving a taxi. JoJo is pretty happy with his lot in life but feels as though something is missing…then he meets Gilda and it’s love at first sight. But the course of true love is a bumpy one and JoJo is going to find that out firsthand when he discovers that Gilda is entangled with the mafia that runs his beloved city, and they’re very much against this potential union for their own reasons. Watch out, JoJo!
“This is my first romance story. It has made me more patient in constructing the details of a story’s design, and it contains many details that I hope readers will like,” said Cardoselli. “I had fun inserting Easter Eggs into many pages of the comic (poking fun at the author Francesca a bit)! With this series, I faced some new challenges such as: creating buildings, skylines, perspectives, and points of view different from those I was used to when creating my previous Mad Cave series. The biggest difficulty was bringing out the emotions felt by a robot that has no mouth to smile or express disappointment, just a set of binoculars to look at the world.”
Take a look at some Cardoselli’s interior work:
And Nimit Malavia provides the variant cover for the first issue:
Look for the first issue of four on April 17.