Love

Major Story Arcs

Desperate for a real romantic relationship after so many empty affairs, Amora the Enchantress falls in love with Love itself. She created a physical body for him and romanced him.

However she felt that she was not worthy of him, and needed the Rose of Purity to bring herself back to a state of purity. She couldn’t get it herself so she blackmailed the Defenders into going after it.

However, after realizing that the Rose was a sentient god itself, the Defenders refused. Love was also unhappy with Amora’s machinations, and refused to stay as her lover. He telepathically contacted a different group of Defenders to come and stop Amora. Then, as a means of recompense for the evil she had done, he took the insane soul of Barbara Norriss, which the Enchantress had imprisoned in the body of Valkyrie, and brought Norriss back to sanity. Then he brought her into his own ethereal sphere to live with as his lover forever, since her own body had been destroyed, thereby fully spurning Amora. (Eventually Norriss returned to Earth.)

It is unclear whether Love is an Asgardian god, or from some other pantheon, or is a force of the universe outside the Earthly pantheons. He never had a physical form until Amora created for him. It should be noted that in his first on-panel appearance, he looked quite a bit like cliche Western images of Christ, standing around peacefully in white robes and long auburn hair with a bunch of animals; J.M. DeMatteis’s run on Defenders often used such cultural and literary references and tropes.