Love & Rockets - classic or dud

Also, the first L&R fans I knew were the kinds of people who make you want to never like the things they like, which unfairly biased me against it.

Wasn't the 1st book more a sci-fi romp than the sort of thing that L&R became known for?

http://69.26.135.130/comic/150/a/anglluv-001.gif

... which had a "... COCAINE?" bit in its advertisements, which made me think it was going to be some lame Don't Do Drugs romantic comedy. Which it might've been, but it wasn't Love & Rockets after all.

with gilbert you'd probably better just start at the beginning; it's hard enough figuring out what's going on without having to read everything out of order!

By the time I get back from work today I want an Angel Love thread with 50 answers. (btw it was rubbish Tep.)

Love And Rockets is grebt but I've not read it in 10 years. I wonder if Morrissey has read it.

My favorite Jaime book is "Wigwam Bam"; favorite Gilbert book is probably "Love & Rockets X," though I'm not in agreement w/ many people on that one. Maybe just go for "Palomar."

soundtrack: The Pixies' cover of "I can't forget"

It was high and fine and free, oh you should have seen us

OK. so should I just give up on "Music For Mechanics" and throw good money after bad acquiring a copy of "The Death Of Speedy"?

then they got phased out.

(3) Post LOCAS. After LOVE AND ROCKETS VOLUME 1 ended, Jaime first did an all-wrestling "Locasverse" spinoff called WHOA, NELLIE! (available as a $9.95 graphic novel). If you love the LOCAS wrestling stories, get it; if not, don't -- at least not as your first pick. Instead, move onto LOCAS IN LOVE and DICKS AND DEEDEES, which pick up the continuity threads right where LOCAS left off. (These stories originally appeared in MAGGIE AND HOPEY COLOR FUN and PENNY CENTURY.) After that, you can either wait for the next volume (coming in December), GHOST OF HOPPERS, or collect all that material in the first 10 issues of LOVE AND ROCKETS VOL. II.

Beginning with LOVE AND ROCKETS VOL. II #11, all the Jaime stories are as yet uncollected, and probably won't appear between book covers until 2008 or 2009 at the earliest.

Beto guide here.

An aside: I think I love Beto's Fear of Comics almost as much as Locas or Palomar.

and

Therefore, if you've purchased and enjoyed PALOMAR, your first stops will be LOVE AND ROCKETS VOL. 12: "POISON RIVER" (the early story of Luba) and LOVE AND ROCKETS X (a story set in then-contemporary L.A. which featured one of Luba's daughters and has since worked its way into post-Palomar continuity).

and

LOVE AND ROCKETS VOLUME 1 has about 60 pages of stories such as "BEM," "Music for Monsters," et al. (Also available much cheaper --five bucks total!-- as LOVE AND ROCKETS #1 and #2.)

and

There are four very early "Locasverse" stories in LOVE AND ROCKETS (Vol. 1) #1 which were not included in LOCAS because they were comparatively crude. As it happens, you can still buy the original 64-page LOVE AND ROCKETS #1 for only $2.50 through the Fantagraphics catalog -- or you can buy LOVE AND ROCKETS VOL. 1: MUSIC FOR MECHANICS, which reprints #1 and #2. Although this latter ploy will give you a duplicate copy of the 40-page "Mechanics" story which leads off LOCAS, the other 80 or 90 pages of comics are not collected in either LOCAS or PALOMAR, and well worth the price (especially Gilbert Hernandez's "BEM," featuring a pre-Palomar Luba.

and

There's about 100 pages of "Locasverse" stories that were cut from LOCAS because they focused on peripheral characters -- Rena Titañon wrestling stories, Penny Century larks, etc.; unfortunately for collectors, they're scattered in Volumes 2, 4, 5, and 6, which otherwise contain mostly stories collected in LOCAS and PALOMAR. (Volumes 7, 11, and 13 are COMPLETELY collected in LOCAS -- well, except for one 3-page story in Vol. 13 that didn't make the cut -- so you can ignore them.)

and

However, LOVE AND ROCKETS VOLUME 9: FLIES ON THE CEILING, while it does contain a number of pages collected in LOCAS, is a relative bonanza in this regard, with 37 pages of non-LOCAS "Locasverse" stories, including two of the very, very best: "Flies on the Ceiling" (the story of Izzy in Mexico) and "Spring 1982" (a haunting flashback to the early days of the Doyle character). Volume 9 also contains Gilbert's stunning "Frida."

He doesn't cover Mario at all, but didn't he disappear from L&R almost entirely after the first few, siphoned off into anthologies and Brain Capers and so forth? I don't remember anything non-Locasverse by Xaime at all, so he's covered. What else is there, maybe a five-page short by Beto every three books, if that? (nb: if at home I would actually check this, no belligerence intended in question!)

three volumes each for Locas and Palomar characters, then one at the end for Mario and Rocky & Fumble* and BEM and Errata Stigmata and all the other oddments. All from v1 #1-50, none of the subsequent series covered.

*(which I totally forgot about in my really-kinda-belligerent post up above)

Anyway I'm not sure what I think of it.

I only got into this last year after reading some of Tom's old books. I found that I preferred Beto's stuff straight away but only this year did I get round to buying the collected paperback Palomar stuff (Heartbreak Soup and Human Diastrophism - a third one is out much later this year featuring Poison River, annoyingly left out of the second volume causing some confusion when readint the final section of that book, and Love And Rockets X tho i don't think i want to wait that long).

So I'm a little obsessed with the Palomar saga at the mo and am disappointed that I can't find any decent analysis or heavy discussion of it online tho I will look harder. I'd love to see a proper timeline of events as much as anything else. A lot of things at the end of Luba Conquers The World/Farewell Palomar/Chelo's Burden (confused by this being final chapter title as it was the title of L&R issue 3 Palomar story also?), particularly why Guadalupe hated Jesus so much.

So I have to read Poison River and then the post-Palomar Luba stuff. Is the Luba's Comics & Stories series good too?

The scene where (kinda spoilerish) Khamo finds Chancla

i didn't get why she looked so sheepish/embarassed as opposed to like completely hysterical/fearful - super creepy tho

i read g hernandez's 'sloth' last night. i'm not sure i have anything to say about it.

Luba's Comics & Stories series good too?

Peculiar - it's kinda Gilbert at his most rarefied and self-indulgent, in my opinion. There are any number of fantastic moments throughout (I've caught up with these via the LUBA trades), though Beto doesn't play anything remotely resembling catch-up with the reader (i.e. Be sure to know your Palomar history).

i didn't get why she looked so sheepish/embarassed as opposed to like completely hysterical/fearful - super creepy tho

That really resonated with me - it didn't follow logically yet felt completely right. I feel it's a massive gamble on Beto's part that payed off enormously.

Peculiar - it's kinda Gilbert at his most rarefied and self-indulgent, in my opinion.

SELF-CORRECTION: See GRIP. But the LUBA books don't fit the "user-friendly" tag, either.

I think looking at this comic now, the context of how different it was to pretty much everything else at the time might be lost. It's popularity really opened the doors for a lot of different things.

The early Mechanics stories were real cool. Later on the Palomar stuff became the best part of the book.

The early Mr. X comics that the Hernandez brothers did were really good. They got ripped off by the publisher and left.

The Palomar reissues have left me slackjawed at how good they are. Yay to Fantagraphix at making this cheaply available again.

They got ripped off by the publisher and left.

They later allowed that they didn't really get ripped off, just treated the way that most cartoonists do when dealing with undercapitalised companies running at the edge of their cashflow - it was just that that had never happened to them before.

That last issue of New Tales from Old Palomar was weird.

Not mind-blowing weird, just kind of odd and not that good?

That last issue of New Tales from Old Palomar was weird.

SEE: That story where Bruno Goya had his eye ripped out by a bird. "A Trick Of The Unconscious", I think.

was that story ever followed up? some sort of goverment experiment?

was that story ever followed up? some sort of goverment experiment?

SEEEEEEEEE: That story where Gato, Pintor, and someone else (I forget) get a glimpse of the future - NEW TALES IN OLD PALOMAR #2, I thiiiiiiiink.

Oh I see, I'll have to try and find that old storyline (collected somewhere in Palomar I assume??).

(collected somewhere in Palomar I assume??).

Yup - 's a grand little tale that's basically a Casamira solo (she also gets hints of her own end).

I bought a friend of mine Heartbreak Soup recently; I figure it's a good way to be remembered for life.

read the two new(ish) collections the past couple days. most of the locas stuff i'd read before, most of the palomar stuff i hadn't, or had forgotten.

palomar's chronology seems seriously whacked. it seems like tonantzin's introduction ought to show up a lot earlier, for example. i kind of got the feeling that g.h. had invented a lot of events we see in flashback - israel's dead sister, or luba's seduction of heraclio - a long time after the stories in which they are set, so he could rewrite everyone's motivations.

which is of course very very superhero-comic.

kind of got the feeling that g.h. had invented a lot of events we see in flashback - israel's dead sister

That's in "Chelo's Burden", the very first story! I'm serious - look in PALOMAR and see! Girl missing teeth looking directly at viewer, w/ Israel in the back. Dude!

shit, you're right! it doesn't get mentioned in the next two-fifty pages, though.

the page before the one with the dead sister has jesus in prison, too.

oh well. i was starting to like my theory of hernandez as an inveterate retconner.

my theory of hernandez as an inveterate retconner.

Don't completely dismiss it - he clearly intends Gato, when he first introduces him, to be at least in his thirties, yet (if you go by NEW TALES/OLD PALOMAR #2) he's supposedly a teen, I think. He does something similar with Borro, the pre-Chelo sherrif - he goes from incompetent corrupt drunk (in HEARTBREAK SOUP) to a morally ambiguous, somewhat suave, and cunning detective (in ECCE HOMO/HUMAN DIASTROPHISM).

so, wait, amazon.co.uk lists the second volumes of the new reprints as already out? eh?

that's because they came out last month

the titan books ones are for september. i dunno whether to order the american ones off the internet or to wait as i) an exercise in patience and ii) an exercise in anally making sure my copies have spines that match, sigh.

Based on Titan books past, I'd order the US books as they're bound to be prettier.

The Titan bks are identical to the Fantagraphics ones, apart from the company logo on the spine etc - these are just 'add ons' to the end of the print run, just like the Titan versions of DC GNs

I'm waiting for the Brit versions cos Waterstones discounted the first two volumes

Corrected standing.

is 'blood of palomar' the same as (the story) 'human diastrophism'? ("the process of deformation that produces continents and ocean basins in the earth's crust", word fans.)

i read the girl from hoppers and i'm halfway thro (the book) human diastrophism. i wuv these guys.

is 'blood of palomar' the same as (the story) 'human diastrophism'?

yes - contains three short stories totalling 9 pages, plus Human Diastrophism.

I took out the huge Locas and Palomar hardcovers from my local library eariler this year and completely adore the stories. Can anyone link me to a good guide to what stories appear in what trade and when? I realize a decent amount of material was cut from the hardcovers, and I want to start hunting down the remaining stuff, as well as the newer (post Vol. 1) stories. It's hard to figure out now where to go, even with that linked post way up there, I'm still confused... especially where L&R 1-50 end, collection-wise.

Basically, I want to go forward with both brothers' books after those collections, and maybe go back and find the missing material if I have enough time and/or money. It's possible I might be better off just buying those new softcover collections. Fantastic stuff, all in all, can't believe I never got to this stuff sooner, considering I was a Strangers in Paradise fan for so long.

So the short version:

JAIME: "Locas" = most of the Maggie & Hopey stories from L&R 1-50 (a few, particularly the ones that focus on other characters, are omitted). Go to "Whoa, Nellie!" (if you like the wrestling stuff), then "Locas in Love," then "Dicks and Deedees," then "Ghost of Hoppers."

GILBERT: "Palomar" = most of the specifically Palomar-set stories from L&R 1-50 (again, some omissions). While we're waiting for the third volume of the cheap Gilbert paperback reprints to come out, go to the old numbering system's vol. 10 ("Love & Rockets X"), then vol. 12 ("Poison River"), then "Luba in America," "Luba: The Book of Ofelia" and "Luba: Three Daughters."

Thanks so much for the help, Douglas! I know you actually already posted some of this up there, but I was *really* confused. I gotta start pinching those pennies, now.

I really appreciated those wrestling stories if Jaime's, actually... I always wonder why wrestling or sports comics never became a genre here, as they have in Japan. I found Rena Titañon's stories (as well as the other superhero stuff) pretty charming, the way they fit into that universe, even though Mechanics really is a very strange, semi-inappropriate introduction to the entire thing.

sooo when duz the american ed of the next lot of reprints come out? i dunno if i can hang on the additional however long it'll take for titan books to put their names on the spines, this time.

December, probably.

November/December, say Fanta.

That page I was always hoping for, a clear guide to what of the new and old trades to buy finally exists. In particular, "Love and Rockets X" and "Poison River" were reprinted in a third Gilbert volume, Beyond Palomar, and Amor Y Cohetes fills in the blanks.

All I need now is to know if they're going to reprint more of that post v1 stuff into new trades, like the Jaime stuff.

The tentative plan is to do a giant hardcover Locas II and giant hardcover Luba In America before they think about reformatting the later stuff into small books. Since they haven't even started collecting most of Beto's L&R v2 stuff into "old trades" yet, the "new trades" are probably a good many years off.

Amor Y Cohetes is the last book they are putting out in that format? thats fucked up.

hrm. complete vol 2 of l&r is $40 in floppies on the fantagraphics website => you're not going to get a better deal than that for it, however they collect it

I am sticking with the old format books, at least until I have bought all the ones my local shop is selling off cheap.

I like the smaller books, as I reckon that whole Palomar book would be intimidatingly big.

I reckon that you could do what I did and read Human Disastrophism/Blood of Palomar first, and then work backwords. The tragedy of Tonantzin almost works really well that way.

Do the characters from one brother ever appear in the other's stories? I saw Vincente and a woman (Pipo?) knocking around in a Jaime wrestling story, but beyond that they seem to like their own.

Nope, each brother does his own stuff--I think there are a couple of times when they've drawn their characters into the background of the other's as a goof, but that's about it.

I remember that ones in Eightball there was a story where Dan Clowes drew a one or two page strip featuring the characters from Hate ( Eighball-style, both in terms of art and storyline)... I was hoping for something like that from the Hernandez brothers.

but it was not to be.

Because I'm slow at these things, I haven't read the Gilbert stuff yet. If I read the nice new reprints (Heartbreak Soup to Beyond Palomar), will I be missing anything significant out, "Flies on the Ceiling"-style?

And just to baby feed me even more: does Gilbert's run have the same problem as Jaime's? (i.e. takes about three hundred pages to really start cooking).

The nice new reprints of Gilbert's stuff start at the moment he went supernova, so no worries there. (The earlier, messier stuff shows up in "Amor y Cohetes."

I had a dream that I was at a very colorful Palomar-themed amusement park!

I remember that ones in Eightball there was a story where Dan Clowes drew a one or two page strip featuring the characters from Hate ( Eighball-style, both in terms of art and storyline)... I was hoping for something like that from the Hernandez brothers.

But they did do that once! Beto did a Locas story and Jaime did a Palomar story. They were both collected in Hernandez Satyricon (vol. 15 of the original set of trades), and I assumed that they would be re-collected in Amor y Cohetes. Were they not?

Because I'm slow at these things, I haven't read the Gilbert stuff yet. If I read the nice new reprints (Heartbreak Soup to Beyond Palomar), will I be missing anything significant out, "Flies on the Ceiling"-style?

My understanding is that they didn't pull the choke job on the nice new reprints (or the NNRs, as they're referred to by the real fans) that they did on the huge old hardcovers (the HOHs) in omitting a lot of important stuff. I'm a big enough sucker that even I (despite owning all of the original trades) will probably end up buying the NNRs at some point, but I'd advise anyone interested in hopping on the L&R train to give the HOHs a definite pass at this point.

The tentative plan is to do a giant hardcover Locas II and giant hardcover Luba In America before they think about reformatting the later stuff into small books. Since they haven't even started collecting most of Beto's L&R v2 stuff into "old trades" yet, the "new trades" are probably a good many years off.

...darn. Well, considering I've been too lazy to buy any of these trades yet, we'll see... I'll at least pick up the last Gilbert and the odds n' edds books of the new reprints. I suppose I'll have to get Whoa, Nellie! and so on if I can find them (Locas In Love seems to be out of print already).

How do you know this, btw? Is there an official Hernandez Bros. site? Or did I just miss more buried news in Fantagraphic's site?

But they did do that once! Beto did a Locas story and Jaime did a Palomar story. They were both collected in Hernandez Satyricon (vol. 15 of the original set of trades), and I assumed that they would be re-collected in Amor y Cohetes.

eccelente, my local comic shop is selling off Hernandez Satyricon for a tenner.

How do you know this, btw?

Kim's said on the TCJ message board.

At this point, I've probably spent over three hundred dollars on bros. Hernandez work and it's in about four different formats. I think I've got just about everything, it's about cobbling it together.

I actually did read both Sloth and Chance in Hell recently, both of which I liked. They're both pretty dark and veer towards the more dreamy/metaphysical side of Gilbert's work.

The new three-part fantagraphics books of each artist (Locas/Palomar books cut in thirds & softcover) are like $9-10 each on Amazon right now.

So that's, what, $50 for the entirety of v.1? Next to the $2-300 I paid for the original trades? Blerg.

Fanta's deal of the lot of seven for $85 seemed ludicrously cheap already!

MegaLuba hardcover, I'm guessing, coming next February: http://www.amazon.com/Luba-Love-Rockets-Gilbert-Hernandez/dp/1560979607/

(BTW Deric 7 x $10 is $70)

Yes. My maths are good, but my counting not so much (I was thinking that there were only five of the newfangled reprint volumes).

P.S. Was just at the shop and confirmed that Amor y Cohetes does, indeed, contain Jaime's Palomar story and Beto's Locas story.

Woops, forgot to buy Hernandez Satyricon, bought #3 instead.

wait, amor y cohetes is actually out already?

haha i only just worked out what cohetes means

Oh man, you guys, I just read The Education of Hopey Glass in one sitting--seriously, there aren't many pleasures in life greater than reading a whole chunk of Jaime Hernandez's comics at once...

(This is the one that collects Jaime's stories from the last few years' worth of L&R: the serial about the week where Hopey gets her new glasses and starts her new job, and the cluster of stories about Ray, the Frogmouth, and the dude who gets shot.)

Oh man, you guys, I just read The Education of Hopey Glass in one sitting--seriously, there aren't many pleasures in life greater than reading a whole chunk of Jaime Hernandez's comics at once...

It's a shame "a whole chunk" takes about five years...God, I can't wait til July or whenever the GN effect takes hold.

So, having just read Locas in three days, I'm in the process of queueing up the rest of the Jaime bibliography at the library. Is there anything between Ghost of Hoppers and Education of Hopey Glass?

no, there's only the three of those skinny hardcovers

as probably enumerated upthread, there's lots of Jaime that's not in Locas though

Yes, arango. There are two collections between Locas and Ghosts of Hoppers. Immediately following Locas is the only-tangentially-related Whoa, Nellie!, which features the wrestling-related L&R characters and features them wrestling. You can probably quite safely skip that one if you're only interested in the bigger story, but it's fun. And then there's Dicks and Deedees, which is apparently out of print at the moment, but which is an actual, for-real Locas story.

For other, non-Locas Jaime goodness, consult the recently-released Amor y Cohetes collection.

Also can I just say that every time this thread pops up, it's like a knife in the gut that reminds me that most of my comics are in storage 200 miles away from here? Can I just say that? Thanks.

I feel bad continuing to push this thread upward knowing it hurts Deric so, but thanks for the guidance. The library doesn't have Whoa, Nellie! but it sounds excellent so will have to actually purchase it. The library's a little slow, so may be a while before Amor y Cohetes comes in. (And, to clarify, I've got Locas in Love and Dicks and Deedees arriving already, so will read those before Ghosts of Hoppers).

there are also various Locasverse stories not collected in Locas, like Flies On The Ceiling, which is Izzy's Secret Origin

Oh, yeah! I forgot about Locas In Love! I knew one was slipping my mind. That falls between Whoa, Nellie! and Dicks and Deedees.

And yes to energy flash gordon: the two big L&R hardcovers are disappointingly incomplete. I mean seriously!: Flies On The Ceiling and Poison River are two of the best L&R stories, and their omission makes the hardcovers a must to avoid, as far as I'm concerned.

Perhaps for completion, but as a newbie to the series I found them incredibly addictive and really wonderful. Especially for Locas, as that definitely takes a little while to really build up steam (as much as I like Mechanics and everything with Rita Titañon). Palomar is maybe a little better from the beginning, but for both hardcovers you really get this amazing scope, and see how the comics and artists themselves got better and better over time. I'm not sure the first paperback volumes in either series can adequately sell how great it gets later.

(i still have to get around to buying those new paperbacks with the missing material...)

I started reading Hernandez Satyricon yesterday... there is a great Jaime story which is just three pages of two boxers punching the shite out of each other... no craft, no "gah, I can take this!" interior monologue, just all fists and blood. My kind of comic.

That said, the stories about the girl who gets lost in space with her robot are probably the best things Jaime has ever done.

Vicar, if you liked the boxers story, I'd highly highly highly recommend checking out Beto's Fear of Comics collection if you haven't already. It's pure, unfettered id in places, and completely different from most of his Palomar stuff, but it's one of my favorite Hernandez artifacts.

might well do that.

eerrrrrm, what do people think of Birdland?

I remember the first one, maybe two, from when they came out and... erm... yes. I'll leave it to other people who can put it in better context.

Birdland is fucking great.

Birdland is weird. Aside from actual penetration shots, though, it's not that much weirder or more graphic than a lot of Beto's stuff.

And it does technically fit into the Palomar universe. So you can justify buying it on those grounds, if nothing else.

It's even got some characters from BEM in it! And it's got some of Beto's funniest dialogue.

eh, saying something has any relationship with BEM is not exactly a recommendation, at least not for me.

The characters later turn up in the regular Betoverse.

ok why did no one tell me that the titan re-issues are different sizes from the fantagraphics ones??? this is totally fucking me up

heh. I now have pretty close to TWO complete collections due to this discrepancy and OCD.

oh man i've already started thinking abt that :(

Titan's 80s series or...?

I never even read this purchased copy of Locas In Love, but it looks like the second Jaime hardcover is scheduled now, too:

http://www.amazon.com/Locas-II-Maggie-Hopey-Ray/dp/1606991566

Looks like it has Ghost of Hoppers, too. I still haven't picked up Whoa, Nellie! so I'm wondering if I should just wait for this, or keep getting the trades anyway. Anyone know exactly what this will cover, compared to the current Fantagraphics guide?

I swear, these guys' reprint catalog is getting more complicated than Charlie Parker's.

Everytime I get ahold of a trade and scan those last few pages, I think I'd be more than willing to buy a collection of L&R front and back covers - some of them are so priceless I'm frequently tempted to buy a back issue, despite the fact that I probably have the contents of said issue in question in collected form.

would assume new HC just runs Whoa Nellie -> Colour Special + Penny Century/Locas In Love + Dicks & Deedees -> Ghost Of Hoppers, maybe with the NYT colour story as end signatures.

but then again since Vol III is running in a new direction, probably includes Hopey Gets Glasses and La Perla for sure.

glad to be helpful.

Yeah, that's the thing, I don't want to guess on it... if I didn't see the Amazon listing I'd have no idea this was even coming out. Haven't been able to find any reliable information on this on Fantagraphics' site or anywhere. Not to mention, the other Locas hardcover left out miscellaneous stuff here and there to streamline it and keep the pagecount down.

I swear, these guys' reprint catalog is getting more complicated than Charlie Parker's.

^QFT

to be fair, Fanta might put some info on the site once it's less than six months to the release date.

Robot 6 reckon the catalog suggests that: "As with the last Locas coffee-table book, this aims to be an all-inclusive collection, bringing you up to date on what those nutty Hoppers kids have been up to lately. Includes such tales as Ghost of Hoppers and the recent Education of Hopey Glass."

Locas wasn't technically all-inclusive - it turned out the new paperbacks were definitely more comprehensive. Also, if it's already solicited and even has a page count, they must know what's in it at this point, right? So why not put out a press release or something? (Coincidentally, that Robot 6 page is where I found out about this in the first place, haha)

They even have put up a page to clarify the confusing reprint situation up through Vol. 3. My paranoid guess is that they still have tons of the old trades and floppies in their warehouse and still want to clear them out. Or more likely, they are just being lazy.

Yeah, all-inclusive is Robot6's mistake, but no, it's not been solicited for actual orders yet, that'll be months off - this info will be from their book trade catalog, which you can get if yr in the 20/20 club. I imagine if you ask on the TCJ message board, it would take about 90 minutes before Kim posted a helpful reply.

Hey, that's a good suggestion. I've never even been to the TCJ site! Just signed up for the forums and asked (naturally, there was an existing "how do I read L&R chronologically?" thread), I'll post again if I hear anything.

I hope L+R is classic, because last week I ordered two volumes (Heartbreak Soup and Maggie the Mechanic) cold.

The Amazon description says: "Celebrating its 25th anniversary in 2007, Love and Rockets will finally be released in its most accessible form yet: as a series of compact, thick, affordable, mass-market volumes that present the whole story in perfect chronological order."

When I drunkenly ordered this, I interpreted this as meaning that I would be starting with Love and Rockets and the very beginning, at the first issue, moving on to the second, and so on. Now when I think about it, it means that it will be present certain stories (Palomar, for example) in perfect order, not the series as a whole. (?)

I swear, these guys' reprint catalog is getting more complicated than Charlie Parker's.

^^

most accessible form yet: as a series of compact, thick, affordable, mass-market volumes that present the whole story in perfect chronological order

->

certain stories (Palomar, for example) in perfect order, not the series as a whole. (?)

yes. three volumes of Maggie (& Hopey & Their Pals) by Xaime, three volumes of Palomar (& Its Denizens' Adventures Elsewhere) by Beto, and one volume of Errata Stigmata by Beto, Rocky & Fumble by Xaime and miscellaneous shorts by Beto, Xaime and Mario.

the small paperbacks are the completely comprehensible, non-Charlie-Parker version of the catalogue.

ie, if you stick to those, you can ignore any and all books in other formats.

this 'how to read love and rockets' page on the fantagraphics site is reasonably clear:

http://www.fantagraphics.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=76&Itemid=135

Everything from MAGGIE AND HOPEY COLOR FUN (you're right, no WHOA NELLIE) through LOVE AND ROCKETS VOL. II #19 (i.e. short of the NYT Rena story). Or in book terms, LOCAS IN LOVE, DICKS AND DEEDEES, GHOST OF HOPPERS, DICKS AND DEEDEES.

Also I'm pretty sure he meant Education of Hopey Glass instead Dicks and Deedees a second time.

OCD Alert: the upcoming second Fantagraphics Locas HC will be 8" x 5", according to Amazon (who do make mistakes), while the first one was 11" x 9". Maybe Kim can clear this up?

The stories were all drawn for comic size/proportions, not magazine, so it's actually entirely probable.

how is the new luba hardcover? does it leave a bunch of stuff out, as per what seems to be the norm?

bought the Luba hardcover recently as hadn't read any of the stuff in it before. bit puzzled by the order of things - loads on fritz, petra and venus before you get to luba (who seems pretty boring by comparison now ha).

anyway i re-read the Human Diastrophism and Beyond Palomar/Poison River stuff again but was wondering about various characters attitudes to English esp. Pipo's - living in Cali but refusing to speak it - to what extent is Beto making a political point here? An odd thing I noticed (tho may be mistaken) is that whenever the bitching about English comes up it always seems to come from women (Luba, Pipo, Carmen, Tonantzin iirc, uh...that girl who ends up marrying Petra and Fritz's Dad?) and wondered if this was intentional and why (maybe just suggesting the women are more defiant and proud i guess).

New issue was out as of San Diego. Super-intense and great Jaime story; Gilbert's "Fritz's movies/Killer" business getting weirder and weirder. Furry sex, etc.

Furry Sex!

Ape Sex?

hah! I'm holding off on reading New Adventures until I finish Volume II which I can't be bothered to track down all 20 issues of separately at the moment. Should have gotten them all from Fantagraphics when they were $40 a few years ago.

I'm convinced I'm going to wind up with a L&R tattoo one day.

Just read "Locas II," "Luba" and "High Soft Lisp." Throw in "La Maggie La Loca" from #20/The Art of Jaime Hernandez/the NYT Magazine Sunday Funnies, and you're basically up to speed.

Just finished reading issue 3 of New Adventures. Xaime is on FIRE lately.

Ape sex is also proper good.

I don't know if it was mentioned anywhere on ilx, but The Daily Cross Hatch did a good interview with Xaime recently. Here's pt. 4, which has links to the first three:
http://thedailycrosshatch.com/2010/11/23/interview-jaime-hernandez-pt-4-of-4/

Xaime is on FIRE lately.

Xaime has never, ever been better than the new New Stories, but I feel he's been on a cold streak lately otherwise - the NYT story really dragged and I don't think worked for a new audience, and the Ti-Girls story that took up the first TWO YEARS of this bold new format could not have been a worse introduction for new bookstore-based readers to his style, his world, and L&R in general. (Would have been PERFECT for when they went to comic-book format and colour in the 90s though!)

i wasn't crazy about ti-girls... i still haven't gotten around to his story in L&RNS 3, but i haven't heard anyone say it was anything else than the best he's ever done, so i suppose i should get on it. speaking of recent xaime, though, i did really like his story in kramers ergot 7 about the time machine.

Seriously, I haven't been paying as much attention to Jaime for years. Of course Gilbert's stuff had me totally lost, too big, I got confused, but I've been loving all his weird Fritz movie stuff and his weird stuff. But the two Xaime stories in number 3 just blew me away. Part of my problem has just been to not really keep up. I've read it all, but it's been so long since I've gone back and read stuff that I've lost sense of both of them> I think I've been pissed by all the various reissue formats and have gotten confused about what I've read or haven't read.

But the Xaime stuff with her younger brother, the flashback, Ray etc. Awesome stuff.

30th Anniversary panel at SDCC - 1 hour 24. All three Bros, Gary Groth interviewing and powerpointing, other surprises.

thanks!

I have ordered what I need to get up to date with the reprints.

I could just never get into Beto. Jaime was always more my speed. It's inspiring how he's aging his characters.

i had the opposite reaction to most people, oddly enough. i found it easy to become completely immersed in the palomar stories, while the locas stuff took me a few readings and rereadings before i felt the same way. i think part of it has to do with how locas transformed in its early years, whereas palomar is what it is from the earliest stories.

They were guests on the NPR music program Alt.Latino this past week -- can listen here, posted yesterday: http://www.npr.org/2012/09/27/160936447/love-and-rockets-and-music-comic-book-pioneers-gil-jaime-hernandez
Pretty good interview, nothing new for anyone who knows any of their bio.

I've gone back and forth. I mentioned a bit about it above but with more detail...When I got into them, it was all about Jaime. The punk rock lesbians, the gangs, the sci-fi action in the early stuff. Gilbert's stuff I didn't really appreciate. As I got older and the series progessed and evolved, there was a period where I suddenly started to really get into Gilbert, I loved the magical realism element and the stories in general. At a certain point I felt like Jaime's stuff was losing me, like he was just doing these slice of life things with these characters and I was losing sense of any overal story arc, while Gilbert was just getting bigger and better. Stuff like Poison River really killed me. And Gilbert's many non-Palomar stuff and different series and side-projects and the New Love stuff, the really twisted Jim Woodring-esque craziness.

But I totally lost track, just couldn't keep up with all the different series and Gilbert's Palomar family tree got too big for me to follow. And more recently I fell back in love with Jaime.

I mean, I'm splitting hairs, I love them both for similar and different reasons. Much of it is my own fault, it's been a long time since I've stepped back and read a lot in order, but I blame them...all the different series, it got so complicated! And they wouldn't come out for ages then suddenly there'd be a bunch and I'd forget if I had one already and I'd buy the same one again. Then they'd come out with the book and they've edited the story and added 50 pages. It's really frustrating!

If I had the money I'd go back and buy all the books of everything since the first series, because I'm just lost.

I mean, read this:

http://www.fantagraphics.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=76&Itemid=135

and tell me it doesn't piss you off!

Which reminds me, why didn't they include Poison River in the Palomar hardcover? I don't know how you can read that without realizing that in the middle of those stories Gilbert wrote an epic history that relates to current story.

The hardcovers are ridiculous. It seems like the new reprint 'digests' are gonna be pretty all-encompassing, so I think you can stick with those if you're patient. But, yeah, the numerous collection projects are pretty irritating, but I have all of the original series collections and all of the v.2 issues and I'm slowly amassing the 'digests' and the New Stories annuals, so I feel like I don't have to worry about much else.

I do agree with you re: the scattershot nature of Beto's latter day output. I gave up trying to get it all (or even keep up with however many books he puts out in a year), but that's due in large part to the fact that the stuff he's done lately doesn't interest or engage me as much as the Palomar proper stuff does. Hopefully he recollects it into 'digests' at some point down the line.

Oh, in keeping with milking the cash cow, Fantagraphics are releasing a collection of covers, a Reader, and a Companion (what's the difference between a Reader and a Companion, and why do they have to be two separate books?) in celebration of L&R's 30th anniversary.

it's not super hard, at least for Jaime: Mechanic, HOPPERS, Perla, Penny Century, Esperanza

Yeah, Jaime's concise like that. Beto, though, has something like 9 or 10 or more collections (Luba, Book of Ofelia, Three Sisters [all collected in the Luba HC...I think?], High Soft Lisp, Adventures of Venus, Birdland, Love From The Shadows, Troublemakers, New Tales Of Old Palomar, etc.) beyond his three Palomar 'digests' that are varying degrees of Palomar-related.

i think i have pretty much everything but it's in multiple different formats: first run tpb, current reissues, individual floppies, hardbacks...

Aside from the recent-ish slew of Beto books I couldn't keep up with, I'm thankfully just a few issues of Luba and Measles away from having everything in one format (and/)or another.

It's been 9 years since I picked up L&R ( La Perdida, Peter Bagge's stuff and Minimum Wage).
This rings true:
But I totally lost track, just couldn't keep up with all the different series and Gilbert's Palomar family tree got too big for me to follow. And more recently I fell back in love with Jaime.

Feel like I have missed a lot in but I have a mental block not knowing where to pick up, what I'd even purchase..... Last I read was Luba in America. I do prefer Jaime.

Primary Gilbert works, a continuing story of sorts:
Heartbreak Soup, Human Diastrophism, Beyond Palomar, the Luba collection (contains Luba in America, Book of Ofelia, Three Daughters), High Soft Lisp.

Secondary, mostly stand-alone stories: the three Fritz "film adaptations" (Chance in Hell, The Troublemakers, Love from the Shadows), various one-shots (Birdland, Speak of the Devil, Sloth), everything else...

The line about "losing track" reminds me of why I finally have up on the X-Books back in 1994 or so and never looked back.

TBF, this isn't a remotely comparable situation. Although I have mostly kept up with the X-stuff so I don't really have a leg to stand on re: Beto.

I would probably add New Tales Of Old Palomar to the essential Beto list, as well.

My stuff is in storage. I wish I could see what I have and don't have. Been forgetting a lot lately, so if I had my stuff, I'd probably have to read it all again.

Okay, so I've read this stuff over the years but never got around to buying much of it beyond a signed Titan Books edition of Heartbreak Soup and the Palomar hardcover. I bought one of those $50 now for $100 gift certificate to Fantagraphics a little while ago and thought I'd finally buy some for my collection. Since I have the Palomar book, I think it makes more sense to buy the Locas collection and Amor y Cohetes than to buy the complete volume 1 box. Am I wrong in thinking that?

If you have the palomar book, you should make sure get Poison River in some form. I think they left it out of Palomar but it's great and essential back-story.

Okay, so I need Beyond Palomar to go with Amor y Cohetes. Those plus The Locas Collection is roughly $99. Consider it done.

So, Locas ordered from Fanta, the other two from Amazon (if anyone needs Amor y Cohetes it's $6.80 from Amazon right now). Thanks for the feedback, Dan.

The whole thing is so confusing and really pisses me off. So many different versions, and some of the books add pages, or scramble pages. Even the Poison River book scrambled pages around and added a ton of pages that weren't in the original comic!

I don't know what is what and am totally lost.

In any case, Poison River is great and Love and Rockets X is much less related to the Palomar storyline (though it has a bit of crossover) but is still good reading.

Far too confusing. I think the big hardcovers were a good idea but they only muddied the waters further.

At least los bros are consistent - TI Girls has new stuff not in the annual comics. Frustrating.

poison river in the comics skipped back-and-forth in time and hard to follow which iirc is why it was rearranged (chronologically) when collected.

*was* hard to follow.

also just that Beto adds pages and panels and stuff all the time, ever since the X collection

Ti-Girls is the first time Xaime has reworked for the collection afair

I thought he had for the two Locas hardcovers but not to the extent Beto had. Could be totally mistaken.

Locals HC 1 doesn't include stories about non-Maggie & Hopey characters (eg Flies On The Ceiling), no actual new pages or rewriting though afaik

The new soft backs starting from the beginning are comprehensive, no?

As comprehensive as they ought to be, yes (eg no Birdland).

The first three Jaime softbacks, plus the three Gilbert softbacks, plus Amor Y Cohetes = the complete L&R first series (if I'm not mistaken).

Two more Jaime softbacks reprint his stuff from the miniseries that came after and L&R vol 2. Subsequent Gilbert stuff, plus the likes of Birdland, have not been reprinted in this format yet.

yah if I were getting into Jaime I would totally go with the softcovers. There's more to pay for maybe, but its def more complete. I have the first four volumes, the three from the og series and then Penny Century as well.

EZ I think a lot of the stuff missing from the Locas hardcover can be found on the second SC, which I can send to you if you want...

Thanks, but when my orders arrive I'll have all the Locas stuff. I might be missing some Beto from the first two SC collections because I have the Palomar HC. But excepting that I will end up with all the volume 1 stuff from all 3 brothers and the Penny Century & Esperanza books.

Next will be the Luba books, New Takes of Old Palomar, and Ti-Girls. So much great stuff to read and, in the case of volume 1, reread.

New Takes? Fat finger phone typing motherfucker.

New Tales gets collected soon as "Children of Palomar".

Don't know if I've mentioned, but Gilbert's crazy underground stuff from the New Love series is amazing. That can be found in the Fear of Comics collection. The rest of New Love was Venus stuff I think that has probably been compiled with some of the post-Palomar paperbacks.

man, i stop reading for a few years and it's more baffling than ever lol. tri-girls?

Human Driastophism? Whoa Nrellie? Blood Of Pralomar? Chrester Square?

So far, reading the Locas stories chronologically feels weird. The reordered Palomar stories make so much sense, but the vignettes of Locas worked for me going backwards and forwards in time in the original issues. It works fine but feels strange after all these years.

The most recent annual is apparently the last, but only because they're moving back to a semi-regular comic format.

I need to catch up since Love Bunglers. That was almost so good I didn't want to read any more.

I also haven't read *any* of Beto's stuff from the original run, just Jaime's. That is.. an oversight.

Dude Heartbreak Soup and Human Diastrophism are amazing and collect his Palomar stuff beautifully, you should get on it imo.

I know! I've been hoarding HD and HS for a rainy day(s), but I just need to get on with it and read the things already.

The Palomar stuff is at least as good as Locas. I think I may have preferred it on my last readthrough.

After p much adoring those two books I eagerly bought the first volume of the collected Locas and it was dismal. I'm sure it was a bad place to start etc but I doubt I'll ever read further, and the generally Gilbert<Jaime opinions I always read rly bug me.

Also Fear of Comics is great!

Fear of Comics is the best, but now there's a new book that has a lot of the same stuff. As someone who's been reading since issue 18 of the original run, I have to say I can't keep up and am pretty annoyed by all the reprinting and shuffling of stories and duplicating collections. I just can't keep up.

Agreed-upon wisdom that I'm sure has been repeated ad infinitum in this very thread: starting Locas from the beginning is a bad idea. Jaime didn't have as clear a vision from the start as Beto did for Palomar, but dismissing Jaime's work out of hand on that basis is doing yourself a grave disservice. Pick up like the second digest-y Locas trade paperback. Los Bros have been operating on roughly the same qualitative level for a long time.

Fear of Comics is wonderful. If you're a fan, I highly recommend Beto's current Fanta series, Blubber. Pure homoerotic id.

(Re: the ridiculous number of reconfigured collections, I have some of the same L&R material in three different formats at this point. It's goofy. I'm just sticking with buying the annuals/single issues and the new digest things as they come out.)

god Blubber is some seriously sick and twisted shit

One alien phallus penetrating an alien orifice after another.

I'd be fascinated to know what Beto's actual views on sex are. One could certainly draw all kinds of conclusions based on his comics work.

creepy thing tho is that it seems to flirt ever so slightly w things like rape and pedophilia and it is so so so graphic

It gives me the sort of visceral reaction I get from Solondz

It does feel like Gilbert's work has become more blatantly fetish-y as the years have gone by.

Birdland almost feels quaint in comparison.

Anybody else ever watch the Naked Cosmos?

Fear of Comics is the best, but now there's a new book that has a lot of the same stuff. As someone who's been reading since issue 18 of the original run, I have to say I can't keep up and am pretty annoyed by all the reprinting and shuffling of stories and duplicating collections. I just can't keep up.

― dan selzer, Tuesday, June 28, 2016 9:18 AM (8 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is a problem and has kept me from buying Jaime stuff lately - that and the fact that it's hard to find individual issues

The Jaime stuff is really easy not to duplicate: buy either a thick digest every eight years, or a tall hardcover every 2-3 years.

The single issues have never been easier either, as they've just spent a decade only coming out once a year or less.

and you could buy them in both comic shops and bookshops, which wasn't the case in the first 25 years of the series

more helpful than it used to be: http://www.fantagraphics.com/howtoreadloveandrockets

Yes, from that link, I'd simply recommend new readers buy the Complete Love and Rockets collections (maybe starting with vol. 2 of Jaime's stuff if you want to skip the patchier material and returning to vol. 1 once you're in love with his work) and the annuals (of which I believe there are now eight). Or skip the annuals and wait for the Complete Love and Rockets collections of that material to trickle out over the next couple of years. I'd skip the hardcovers (particularly since at least one of the big ones bafflingly skipped some fairly pertinent material).

yeah otm, the Complete trade paperbacks are the way to go if you don't mind the pages being sliiiiightly smaller than the OG publishings

The jumbo compendium best-of hardcovers don't exist anymore. I would still recommend buying the single-story hardcovers for Jaime's 21st century stuff, because both Bros are much better larger.

sorry if I'm repeating myself but all the scrambling editing has really taken it's toll. Here's what I remember bugging me. The original comics version of Poison River jumped back and forth a lot and was hard to follow, but the collected Poison River simplified by consolidating the flashbacks in a way I thought worked great. But then I bought the big Palomar book and all of Poison River was left out of it...despite characters and events that take place towards the end really only making sense if you've read Poison River!

So re: Jaime and L&R hardcovers, I picked up something called "The Education of Hopey Glass" for $1 today.

Late-period collection of L+R v. 2 material, since recollected in the compact digest-y trades. Part of the OG series of trades/HCs (volume twenty-something). I have all of those up to the point where it became clear that they would be refocusing on the digests.

Again, the Jaime collections have not refocused on the digests: the magazine-size hardcovers have continued to collect his L&R material by storyline after vol 2 ended. He even started reworking the material for them, Beto-style.

(I think the latest digest is up to Education Of Hopey Glass - the next will likely cover all the vol 3 Locasverse material in four years or so; I'd guess ten years before there's enough for another Amor Y Cohetes. The Love Bunglers, the most recent hardcover, is one of his two best books ever.)

I dunno, I thought the whole deus/diabolus ex machina solution of introducing a previously unmentioned brother who plays a crucial part in the story felt weirdly extraneous. The brother's story was a well-done bit of soap opera in itself, but IMO it should've been a separate thing, and "Love Bunglers" should've focused on just Maggie and Ray.

Wait how is he reworking material for them??

and yeah the latest Jaime digest is Esperanza, which collects the latter half of v2 (I think Penny Century collected the first half). They're done with New Stories entirely though so I'm guessing it won't be long before they release a digest of all of it.

Jaime definitely has a weird habit of retconning in characters that dramatically revise the whole Locas storyline. The whole Maggie/Tony Chase story was a particularly bad example of this.

xpost

Both Bros have altered/added material in their collections (I think it was Love and Rockets X which added a huge amount of material to the original story). I think these guys are literally the only ones I give a pass to with that kind of stuff and am still willing to shell out $$$ for edition after edition. God knows they probably aren't getting rich off of it.

Yeah, wasn't it revealed that she was married to him only at the point she was applying for a divorce? And then it was retconned that she and Hopey had known him since they were all teens?

(xpost)

exactly, it's strange to me that we are supposed to accept that this dramatic relationship has been going on for years and we've just never heard about it

It's valid to complain that Ray and Maggie's relaysh didn't have as much gravitas because we didn't see the full scope of their relationship until late in the game, but it's hardly a retcon. Besides, Ray has been around for a long time at this point, and we've seen him and Maggie's off and on thing since, what, at least the '90s.

We weren't talking about Ray, but T.C, the guy Maggie divorced from... And his brother (forget the name) who was only introduced in Love Bunglers.

Her brother, not his, sorry.

They're done with New Stories entirely though so I'm guessing it won't be long before they release a digest of all of it.

nah because there's still at least one, probably two mag-sized hardcovers of Jaime material to collect (depending on whether the space adventure stuff gets skipped) first

Both Bros have altered/added material in their collections (I think it was Love and Rockets X which added a huge amount of material to the original story).

Jaime never added new material until God & Science, but Beto has been at it for decades. Poison River and "X" are the most significant culprits: with Poison River, he reordered the story from the serialisation, then added pages and rewrote chunks as an unplanned further part of the revision.

Love & Rockets (X) got expanded twice because of the formats: the first collection was done as a 10" to better sell to record shops, and he had to add panels and tiers throughout to keep the impact of new-page-reveals and specific bits of panel-to-panel timing. Then when they let that version go out of print and put the story into the magazine-size TPB line, he didn't want to throw out the new material, so had to expand once more to make it work at a rectangular page layout again.

The best expansion he ever did, which never gets heralded, was adding pages for the first Birdland collection just so it would end on p. 69

Just read God and Science, loved it

I stopped after Penny Century (years ago) bcz Esperanza was out of print for so long, so I have to finish V2 so that I can start New Stories so that I can get to Love Bunglers, which everyone is raving abt.

I don't really sweat continuity and consistency with Jamie's stories - there are so many characters I've usually forgotten all the relationships by the time I read a new one.

But all that "retconning" (seems kind of gross to use that word here) seems to me part of the point, i.e. Jamie has always been clear we are never seeing the whole story all the time

*Jaime

I'd agree, and given the drastic shifts in tone and genre from Jaime's earliest pulp-sf parodies to his more characteristic Hoppers stories, it's hard for me to complain if he keeps revising his charaters' world.

Yeah i dont consider continuity or linearity important w Jaime's work. I'm familiar with enough major chatacters to be comfortable just dropping in anywhere.

Stevie there's 20% off everything on fanta's website all week

Cool news:

http://fantagraphics.com/flog/love-rockets-magazine-returns/

I just picked up a bunch of back issues from the original run this weekend. My local comic store was having a 50% off sale for Labor Day.

along those lines:
http://www.tcj.com/i-dont-think-about-it-i-just-do-it-catching-up-with-gilbert-hernandez/
i mean wtf here

lol

glad he stuck to black and white for that one

pretty stylish tho'

i really should have clicked on that second link at work huh

still, before i clear out my desk and join the unemployment line, i don't think i ever told the story about how i was in san francisco last year wearing a bootleg l&r t-shirt and some guy yelled 'nice shirt' at me across the street before running over and trying to strike up a conversation about los bros hernandez. when he realised i was scottish he was nonplussed that i knew about, let alone read and enjoyed, love and rockets, despite my protestations to the contrary

there's no point to this story really i just thought it was funny

okay bye

er, should not have clicked on that link at work

TBF I would probably be surprised if I met someone from San Francisco with an intimate knowledge of The Broons

true, true

I often get puzzled looks when I parade about town in my Rab C. Nesbitt Underoos.

i think you're mistaking overpowering sexual arousal for puzzlement

I fear that I often do.

It doesn't sound like it from the TCJ interview, but I wonder if there are going to be any changes of narrative direction with the switch in format. I respect Beto's commitment to the saga of Fritz and her doubles, but most of my favorite Beto stories this century (like Julio's Day, Marble Season, or Bumperhead) have been outside that continuity.

Like, the current Fritz storyline recalls "Poison River" or "Love and Rockets X" in its density, but so far it feels much more meandering than those arcs.

I'm hoping that going back to the old format with more frequent issues will help give them a bit more narrative focus and drive, which has been missing from both bros stories in recent years

I stopped after Penny Century (years ago) bcz Esperanza was out of print for so long, so I have to finish V2 so that I can start New Stories so that I can get to Love Bunglers, which everyone is raving abt.

― laraaji p. henson (Stevie D(eux)), Wednesday, 20 July 2016 15:56

Stevie there's 20% off everything on fanta's website all week

― Shakey δσς (sic), Thursday, 21 July 2016 00:19 (four months ago)

Stevie there's 40% off everything on Fanta's website tomorrow only

!!!

goddamnit, like i didn't spend enough money this weekend

oh oh oh I have Esperanza now!! Apparently Penny Century was almost ENTIRELY non-L&R Proper stories and it has only one or two L&R V2 things? But Esperanza is more or less the entire Jaime V2 shebang.

I think there's a long, full-color (and mostly inconsequential) Maggie story in a squarebound issue of V2 that's still uncollected. I may be misremembering one or more of those details.

That was the story serialised in the New York Times Magazine*. Collected in L&R v2 #20, reprinted again in The Art Of Jaime Hernandez.

*whose The Funny Pages section also serialised Mister Wonderful, George Sprott, and part of Building Stories.

when's that sale start again?

Err, hate to break it to you, forks...I think it's over.

what the
but sic said "tomorrow" yesterday!
ah well

If sic loses pedantic accuracy, what does he have left?

I feel like I can really see Jaime's influence in the "the lighter side" of Marvel in recent years... artists like Javier Pulido and David Lopez seem to reflect different aspects of Jaime's drawing style (I think DeConnick's "Captain Marvel and the Carol Corps" Secret Wars miniseries, illustrated by Lopez, even had a mechanic character named Maggie who was a clear tribute?).

But even more fundamentally: some of Marvel's more humorous and "low-key" series, featuring plain-clothed characters "at the margins" of the Marvel Universe (often, literally, in Brooklyn) struggling with rent and relationships while the Avengers save the world in the background, feel directly descended from Jaime's "Mechanics" ideas. I'm thinking of the (excellent) Matt Fraction et al. "Hawkeye" series from 2012-15; Charles Soule & J. Pulido's (also terrific) "She-Hulk" run in 2014-15; and some other stuff. I could pick out particular "beats" and panels that feel so Jaime-inflected to me.

Obviously, even Marvel at its most offbeat still features more "conventional" comic-book action than "Mechanics" (in which Maggie was purely a "regular person," and superhero conventions were heavily satirized) -- though, interestingly, Jaime has moved somewhat closer to "convention" when he revisited superheroes in recent years (in his "Return of the Ti-Girls" story).

I also don't want to overstate the influence from "Love & Rockets" alone; as I'm not very familiar with the entire universe of other comics from the past few decades that may be in the mix. But as a longtime Jaime fan, picking up Marvel again in its current renaissance era, I really get the sense that his aesthetic is coming through... (not sure how much good that does him personally, of course!).

(Btw, completely off-topic -- does anyone happen to know why so many great Marvel artists these days happen to be from Spain? Besides Pulido and Lopez, I'm also thinking of David Aja and Javier Rodriguez... maybe others as well. Is there a "story" in the industry behind how this group of Spanish artists broke into the American market?)

iirc there was an appreciative letter from fraction in one of the "new stories".

That sounds familiar, now that you mention it.

Cameron Stewart too, at least circa Catwoman

Turning back to L&R itself -- I feel as though Jaime, in recent(-ish) years, has tried to "wrap up" his main storyline a few times, and move on to other characters; but he keeps coming back to Maggie/Hopey/Ray, even though they're not really doing much.

This might be one of the difficulties of taking up a central focalized character for as long as Jaime's worked with Maggie. The other side of this, though, is that even if Jaime's plotting has been a little meandering after "Ghost of Hoppers" and "Love Bunglers," Maggie's one of the most richly developed characters I can think of in comics, especially as a rueful middle-aged punk.

On the other hand, I wouldn't be sorry if Gilbert wrapped up or abandoned his current storyline about Fritz and her pretenders.

Yeah, I'm sure it would hard for Jaime to close the books on a character like Maggie. The newer characters, while endearing, aren't on the same level as the classic Hoppers crew; which may be why Jaime's stories with the newer folks tend to involve murder mysteries, etc. And no doubt Maggie will still be interesting even as she continues to age (Jaime's always done really well with portraying older women anyway).

That said, the end of the Love Bunglers storyline really felt like a graceful farewell to Locas (and I assumed at the time that that is what it would be).

I'd agree that Love Bunglers would have been an artful conclusion, but I'll also say that comics as a medium is not exactly groaning under the weight of its nuanced representations of middle-aged queer women, so I think I can deal with Locas remaining open-ended.

I feel you

Btw (just to be clear) -- I have zero problems with reading about middle-aged characters. My comments were related to the fact that their lives don't have the "drama" that they did when the characters were younger (just like with real people), and so it becomes a new kind of challenge for Jaime to keep focus on them and still keep it interesting. But I'm sure he can meet that challenge. (We've seen most stages of Maggie's life since toddlerhood -- I hope someday we see her gray and happy, whether it's on Rena's island, Vicki Glori's wrestling ranch, or a bungalow in L.A.)

i will say i miss the moments of magical realism in hopey/maggie's world; that's been mostly missing for awhile now and could use a resurgence. wanna see em save the world!

lol did you read Ti-Girls

lol my thoughts exactly

that was like 2009! it's been a minute.
or are you saying those stories aren't good, because i would disagree.

I liked Ti-Girls a lot but yeah I only read it last year, and then Love Bunglers shortly after. I have no idea when things are originally published anymore.

That's the thing about the timeframe of L&R... it rolls along so slowly, it's hard to keep track of how long ago a particular storyline was. I guess it was always that way, but I'm more aware of it now (probably because the "New Stories" have been published only once or twice a year?).

It's further complicated by the fact that the characters age in "real time," but a storyline that spans only a few days or weeks may be the only storyline in a half-decade. It's somewhat disorienting (I'm not griping here, just commenting).

I feel like the L&R stories are really best read in collected volume form, but it's hard waiting that long...

At the park today with my kid, I saw a woman around my age (with her kid) wearing a Love & Rockets T-shirt (the design with Hopey playing guitar and Maggie sitting with bongos). Can't recall ever seeing someone wearing L&R gear before; I had to say something. She said she got it around 30 years ago, at Comic-Con. *thumbs up emoji*

How bout this action?

https://www.pinupgirlclothing.com/collections/wondercon-themed-clothing.html

That's awesome. I wish there was more L&R merch (I had a poster on my bedroom wall in high school). I'd totally rock a Jaime T-shirt these days... but Fantagraphics seems to offer zero SKUs at the moment.

In freshman year of h.s., I photocopied the cover of Love & Rockets #31 (Mag and Hope sitting in the back of a van, looking at the "camera") and taped the copy to one of my notebooks. I gradually graffiti'd it in black pen over the course of the year, for added effect.

(Between that and the "R.E.M. - Out of Time" logo I carefully cut out from a CD longbox and taped to the front of another notebook, I was clearly a punk-as-fuck frosh!)

Just pulled L&R #32 off my shelf -- two observations: (a) It only cost $2.50 (ha ha ha)! (b) Whoa, it has "Spring 1982" in it. Between that and the cover, what a stone-classic issue.

(uhh, sorry, I meant #31 - the issue I referenced above.)

Anyway, I would click "Add to cart" on an XL T-shirt reproducing that cover art, before the digital ink wuz dry...

omg the L&R 31 cover is prob my favorite cover!!

my god, I just finished the 10-part "Maggie" story (from the beginning of Vol. II, and the first thing in the collected "Esperanza" book) and it was INCREDIBLE. I'm still amazed with how emotionally profound and complex Jaime's work can be.

picked up vol. 4 #2 yesterday

My trajectory now is finishing "Esperanza", reading Gilbert's two collected Vol. II volumes, and then reading all of New Stories so I can finally start with Vol. IV.

I will probably wind up getting an L&R tattoo at some point in all of this.

omg is it finally out?? I'm gonna go pick it and the new Paper Girls up this afternoon.

haha, I've considered an L&R tattoo as well

I have no tats but it's one of a very few I'd consider.

Altho I have all of the L+R material (often in multiple formats) I'm ashamed to say that I still haven't read past the end of v2.

It's worth pushing forward for the sake of reaching Ghost of Hoppers and The Love Bunglers.

the 10-part "Maggie" story (from the beginning of Vol. II, and the first thing in the collected "Esperanza" book)

Which story was this specifically (quick plot synopsis)?

Ok it looks like 10-part "Maggie" = Ghost of Hoppers, which was serialized over several years in Vol. II and also collected in "Esperanza".

Ah, thanks... I read Vol. II in the form of the original collections, so I just know the material as "Ghost of Hoppers," "Dicks & Deedees," etc.

L&R must feel like the Fall discography or something to a newcomer – decades of material, packaged various ways over the years, "where do I even start?," etc.

Flipping thru the volume now... I forgot "the Frogmouth" was already involved, that far back. She's really been skulking around forever!

xp it's so convoluted Fantagraphics has a dedicated page for how to navigate it.

http://www.fantagraphics.com/howtoreadloveandrockets

lol I still can't keep track, that website doesn't explain how those larger collections relate to the older numbered collections

I had everything in either the old book style or single-issue form up to #50. Do I just keep buying the "New Stories" volumes? n.b. I am aware that extra material was added to the books that comprise my single issues, but I ain't buying "Poison River" again.

Well, there are 4 volumes:

V1 was 50 issues from 1981-1996
V2 was 20 issues from 2001-2007
V3 ("New Stories") was 8 paperbacks from 2008-2016
V4 is 2 issues so far, both published in the last 6 months or so

The 11 inexpensive "Love & Rockets Library" mass-market paperbacks have so far collected all 70 issues of V1-V2 plus some standalone stuff like "Penny Century"; I emailed FG several months ago and at that point they had no current plans to publish "New Stories" in library format, though I'm sure it'll happen eventually.

There's also the 28 or so collections (the ones about 100-150 pages each, give or take) that run through all of V1-V2 but also part of V3. At this point, they're completely obsolete, unless there's some advantage over the mass-market paperbacks that I'm not aware of.

There's ALSO a couple of big giant books (Locas, Locas II, Luba, etc) that are also now obsolete I think (they're also edited and incomplete).

anyway if you've read everything in V1 & V2, then yeah, buy all 8 New Stories and then buy the first 2 of the new V4 issues

At this point, they're completely obsolete, unless there's some advantage over the mass-market paperbacks that I'm not aware of.

Books like "The Love Bunglers" continue this sequence. Art at the larger size is a plus I guess.

Yeah, just stick to the 11 mass market paperbacks + the 8 New Stories annuals + the 3-issue Tales of Old Palomar and you're caught up to the current series that's two issues in. Then you can go down the twisting path of tangentially-related Beto stuff like Birdland and the Fritz movie adaptations if you're feeling nuts. Avoid the giant incomplete hardcovers.

what I have:

old style big books ("Duck Feet", "Death Of Speedy", "Tears From Heaven", etc.) - Vols. 1-7, 9, 12, 15.

issues 29-50 of Vol. 1

one offs in that weird interim period:

Penny Century 1-7
Girl Crazy 1-3
Fritzi & Petra #1
Birdland (I lost #3 somehow, aren't these a whole book now?)
Luba 1-6
Maggie & Hopey
New Love 1-6
most of the Measles run
Grip 1-5
The Adventures Of Venus
"Love & Rockets" (I assume this is Vol. 2? regular size comic books with cardstock covers) 1-10 (missing #5)
"New Stories" 1, 2, 3, 5

then I got confused/gave up

so what do I need to get caught up with Vol. 2? I guess I need something that collects issues 11-20 and I need #5? am I missing anything significant in the 11-volume trade PB series that I mostly already have?

Well almost all of Jaime's V2 is in "Esperanza" (with one or maybe two stories in "Penny Century"); Gilbert's is spread across "Luba and Her Family" and "Ofelia"

sweet, thanks, that'll do.

I also have Whoa Nellie #1

ugh wait wait wait apparently according to the links at https://www.comics.org/series/85905/ and digging into the indexes of the V2 issues, Gilbert's work from V2 is NOT collected in the L&R Library books at all, but is instead only in the "Julio's Day" and "High Soft Lisp" books??? ugh what the fuck

hahaha OK thanks, duly noted

they really make it hard

never fails to confuse me.

just buy the first collection of everything and you stay golden

Art at the larger size is a plus I guess.

numbered spines til I die for this reason

Birdland (I lost #3 somehow, aren't these a whole book now?)

1-3 were expanded for a collection so that the page count would be hilariously apposite. He later did a Birdland special, which was later added into a larger collection. Both collections are now long out of print.

what I have: old style big books ("Duck Feet", "Death Of Speedy", "Tears From Heaven", etc.) - Vols. 1-7, 9, 12, 15.
issues 29-50 of Vol. 1

Whoa -- I also have issues 29-50! (Plus Vols. 1-11 of the OG collections.) How funny that we each started with #29 (rooster cover).

As I mentioned above, I have Vol. II and the Penny Century stuff covered via the books (starting with "Locas in Love"); though I also have issue #20 of Vol. II, as I believe that contains a Maggie/Rena story that wasn't collected anywhere else (...could be wrong).

(Also, fwiw, I'm only a Jaime completist; lost track of Gilbert after Vol. I ended.)

Yeah, Beto's hard to keep up with. I forgot that his v2 work hadn't been collected as part of the mass market trade series yet.

I have the original 15(?) trades collecting v1 (really should sell these someday since the new trades collect the same material) and then I just started buying everything from the beginning of v2 on. So I guess I'm lucky to not have to worry about what I'm missing. Except for the 428 Beto side projects which I'll probably never get around to picking up.

the latest gilbert collections ("luba and her family" and "ofelia") contain vol. 2 stuff.

the wikipedia page for love and rockets does a decent job of listing the various existing books.

If your copy of Book 2 looks like this, I'll happily buy it from you. Mine is some older version that doesn't match the rest of the volumes; it's always kinda bugged me...

(Hmm... spent time on that l33t coding, and somehow my link didn't work)

ha I can't see that but seeing as how I bought my Book Two in 1987 or so it is probably older, iirc a light blue cover w/Luba.

It's a nightmare trying to stay on top of this but I think the Luba hardcover is the only place to get the piece from Vol 2 #20. Fanta sez:

Note to collectors: this volume collects stories which originally appeared in the comics series Measles, Luba and Luba's Comics and Stories and were previously collected in the softcover collections Luba in America, Luba: The Book of Ofelia, and Luba: Three Daughters; the final chapter, from Love and Rockets Vol. II #20, is previously uncollected

I guess it might be in the Ofelia paperback, since that came out after?

Anyhoo, I enjoyed Vol 4 #2 quite a lot but I'm a sucker for the Maggie & Hopey Punk Rock Nostalgia Trip.

Punk Rock story is definitely the best, Viv and Angel storyline also pretty good. The rest of the stuff I can take or leave.

<i>ha I can't see that but seeing as how I bought my Book Two in 1987 or so it is probably older, iirc a light blue cover w/Luba.</i>

Yep, that's mine, too... slightly smaller format than the others, with a totally different design scheme.

the latest gilbert collections ("luba and her family" and "ofelia") contain vol. 2 stuff.

those are actually collections of some spin-off Luba comics. In V2 he serialized mostly Julio's Day and High Soft Lisp, which has only been collected in the "Julio's Day" and "High Soft Lisp" books. https://www.comics.org/series/17785/ has links to each V2 issue containing tables of contents and references to where each story has been collected elsewhere so far.

how feasible is it for me to just fuckin buy the old Vol. 2 issues 11-20? are back issues on eBay or something?

fanta sells most (maybe all?) of them online

if they are on the site, I don't see them.

ah, they are grouped (in no order) under "Comic Books"

the colour Maggie story fro the New York Times is also in The Art Of Jaime Hernandez

Ah yeah I have that too

for everybody's information, Vol. II #s 5, 13, 15 and 20 (at least) are out of print now and not on Fanta website, still out there used for reasonable prices but not for long I imagine.

Still confused about whether the big books (numbered spines) have more material than the original comics, like didn't Poison River boast about 100 extra pages or some such? Is this the case with the new, non-numbered books collecting Vol. II stuff as well?

signed,

still confused

The Wikipedia "Poison River" page says:

For the completed book edition Hernandez divided the story into seventeen chapters and added another sixteen pages, and prefaced each chapter with an illustration of one of the characters, suggesting the chapter was to focus on that character.[13]

*serialization

I wrote an amazon review about poison river. That's a great book. I was also annoyed that they left it out if the big Palomar book because it included what seemed like useful backstory.

haha I saw that!

"100 Rooms" was significantly expanded for the first collection it appears in (and I assume any subsequent collections, like that big "Locas" book, use that version, as well).

"Ti-Girls" also apparently gained new panels for its collection, though I haven't bought any of the New Stories collections (just the original issues).

FYI -- Fanta's having a 20% off (everything) sale today.

Goddamnit.

Latin American cultural references largely unfamiliar to English-speaking audiences, such as to lucha libre, Frida Kahlo, Cantinflas, and Memín Pinguín, may also have played in a role in the book's cold reception.

ppl are fucking morons

English-speaking people, anyway.

I'm a bit skeptical... "cold reception" by whom? (I searched the quote and found the "Reception and Legacy" section of the Wikipedia entry for "Poison River"... the footnotes mainly refer to a few articles which aren't online, so I guess okay...)

("Wikipedia still suxx in 2017")

All this L&R talk inspired me to re-read "The Death of Speedy Ortiz" (and its prelude, "The Return of Ray D."). For me, the era these stories kick off (1987-90) was a high-water mark for both Jaime's art and writing. "The Death of Speedy" collection (Vol. 7 of The Complete Love & Rockets) was also the first L&R book I ever bought, shortly after its publication; so it has a special hold on me for that reason, as well (like the first album you ever heard from your favorite band).

Anyway, I revisit this book every so often, and still find something new to appreciate each time. "The Death of Speedy Ortiz" is basically flawless... and what strikes me now is the "economy" of the storytelling. It's not a particularly long story, but it "feels" heavier and more substantial in your memory. It's as though Jaime only shows you certain (key) scenes from a story that could have been twice as long... almost as if it were edited down from a longer version (but gaining clarity, rather than losing substance, in the editing). The scenes are brief; each dialogue exchange moves the story along; every panel feels "necessary" and "just right"; but what Jaime chooses to show you also feels loose and natural, not labored over. You're left with the impression that he could have shown you an almost entirely different set of scenes from the same story, but this is what he happened to choose, and it works beautifully.

Without getting too deep into it, I feel you could make the case that each main character, in almost every scene has a "motivation" and objective (as is discussed in relation to filmmaking/acting), and this is part of what drives the narrative momentum. Finally, there's also a light "soap opera" element, coexisting with both "realism" and familiar comic-book tropes, that I had almost forgotten about as an element of Jaime's work (as the "soap opera" dimension has receded in his storytelling over time). It all still feels so fresh and perfectly realized, even 30 years down the road...

I just had a lightbulb over head — Jaime : Speedy's death :: Ozu : the grandmother's death in Tokyo Story.

working my way through the last half of Vol. II individual issues, and man there is some great stuff in there. I also never had #5 so I missed the Penny/H.R. origin story, which I loved.

How funny that we each started with #29 (rooster cover).

sadly I started with #15 but 15-28 were stolen from my house in late '99.

That sucks!!

what kind of asshole steals comic books

the same asshole who stole my treasured complete run of Sound Choice magazine and some early Forced Exposures and probably other shit I have blocked out of my memory

Yesssssssss. Planning my new wardrobe:

https://www.pinupgirlclothing.com/collections/los-bros-hernandez-apparel.html?style=833

I picked up the "Ti-Girls" hardcover in that recent sale. It's nice to have the story in the large format; I hadn't read the whole thing since it first ran. It's an interesting work by Jaime, and pretty dissimilar from most of his other stuff (I guess you could call it an "experiment," though that sounds like a slight). The narrative seems to lose focus and momentum somewhat as it goes along -- kind of gets stuck in the weeds a bit -- but maybe that's "intentional"?

The epilogue added in this volume contributes a good deal of clarity, in terms of how the story fits in with the "regular world" of Locas, and ends things on a nicely poignant note.

I kinda wish Los Bros didn't engage in Lucas-esque rejiggering their stuff so often. I mean, I do eventually get around to buying the collected editions of Hernandez material I'd already bought as it was being released, but I don't like feeling that I'm missing out on something if I don't.

Like, Ti-Girls wasn't top of my list since I already have the annuals, but now I'm curious. Come on, though, guys, seriously.

yeah that's annoying

yeah i'm not sure what i'll do if i ever get to that point in L&R. still about 10 years behind

i've pretty much given up, I still get the occasional new release or book but can't even keep track of it. I figure when I retire I'll go back and by whatever the most definitive books are and try again.

anyone know if the "New Tales Of Old Palomar" material is from earlier volumes?

I got the rest of the individual Volume II issues and am now working my way through New Stories

Nope, that stuff was unique to the New Tales books.

thanks!

Yeah, those three issues are, afaik, the only "in-continuity" material to appear outside of L+R proper in the past 15+ years.

https://www.humblebundle.com/books/best-of-fantagraphics-comics

wait, what the heck is Vol. 4

also i'll personally vouch for Hip Hop Family Tree and Werewolves of Montepelier in tha tbundle

I guess vol. 4 is the current series? If the annuals were vol. 3?

Yeah, it's the current run. "New Stories" was Vol. 3.

that's a good bundle and I will seriously ride or die for Dungeon Quest, which is THE BEST (though there is some deeply odd male body stuff that Daly is working out on the page)
i don't like reading comix in pdf format tho... any easy way to transfer those to cbr?

https://www.reddit.com/r/linuxquestions/comments/48zl0x/convert_pdf_to_cbz_or_cbr/

makes sense, gracias!

thx for bump, picked up the Volume IV issues

It's kind of a skimpy offering, given that they're only 3 or 4 issues into the run.

For you big spenders, I just read about this $150 monster the other day (solicited for later this year):

Fantagraphics Studio Edition: Jaime Hernandez

Internationally acclaimed cartoonist Jaime Hernandez is one of the forefathers of the 1980s–’90s alternative comics and graphic novel movement; his DIY, punk attitude toward the medium has filtered down to the 21st century’s Tumblr comics generation. In this millennium, every page Hernandez draws is die-cut flawless and ready for reproduction; but it wasn’t always that way. Fantagraphics Studio Edition: Jaime Hernandez collects almost 200 pages of the raw, unretouched original art, via select stories — masterpieces, all— from the first fifty issues of the Love and Rockets comic book. These include such classic and beloved stories such as “The Death of Speedy,” “Chester Square,” and “Wigwam Bam.” This book traces the evolution of one of the form’s greatest long-form storytellers from his punk-poster beginnings to the synthesizing of his influences — such as Jack Kirby (Avengers), Steve Ditko (Spider-Man), and Owen Fitzgerald (Dennis the Menace) — to his current, every-line-isorganic- and-essential style; it will be indispensable for collectors, fans, and cartooning students. Like Charles Schulz, another influence, Hernandez’s work looks deceptively effortless; like The Art of Peanuts, this book will illuminate his genius.

oh I meant hard copies - digital reading definitely not for me

oops I tried to post this in this thread but posted it in another less-popular L&R thread by mistake but

looks like the first Library collection of the New Stories (aka Vol. 3) books is coming in January 2018

http://www.fantagraphics.com/angelsmagpies/

Huh -- I didn't know they were still doing those mega-collections.

Meanwhile, there is still Jaime "New Stories" stuff that hasn't been collected, yes? The "Black Widow" storyline about Tonta and her extended family(?)

...Maybe they will collect the above-referenced material together with the current "return to Hoppers" storyline (which, somewhat awkwardly, straddles Vol. 3 & 4).

haven't Jaime collections straddled different series regularly since Locas In Love?

Locas in Love collects the "Penny Century" series -- but in terms of "L&R" itself, there are four "volumes," and Vols. 1 and 2 both ended cleanly (active storylines terminated when the series ended). When New Stories (Vol. 3) ended, Jaime was in the middle of a storyline, which picks up in Vol. 4. Just kind of odd it worked out that way, NBD.

(In other words, it's not a collection straddling two volumes or series that I find awkward, but rather the arbitrary end of Vol. 3 and shift to a new format, mid-story.)

(It also bugs me a little b/c I don't want to buy individual issues of the new volume, just wait for the collections -- but it seems more uncertain these days how long the wait will be.)

I've given up on L+R and have been burned too many times. I will wait until they both retire and I'm retired and I will buy whatever the latest collection fanatagraphics is hawking at that point.

I used to go back and read all the Vol. 1 collections, from the beginning, once a year or so... but no time for that in this stage of my life! (I too will be happily lounging in the retirement village with my stack of books and Ape Sex t-shirt.)

Locas in Love collects the "Penny Century" series

pretty sure it collects like three issues of Penny Century and one story from another issue and most of the Maggie & Hopey Summer Fun Special, but I lent mine to someone two years ago and can't check

I've given up on L+R and have been burned too many times.

if you just buy the "tall" Jaime collections you never get burned! IIRC they still continue the original numbering in the indicia

This looks pretty sweet for fetishizers of artwork/process with $$ to spare: http://www.fantagraphics.com/fantastudiojaimehernandez/

(I'd like to at least read the "new interview with Hernandez, conducted by Fantagraphics publisher Gary Groth, that explores the artist’s inspiration and the formal elements of his craft.")

in recent years I've come to the conclusion that Jaime is one of the greatest comics artists ever, and Gilbert I just don't give a shit about

xp

Ugh, I want this, but it may just be too much.

xp

same. in my 20s it was the opposite.

I can get with that if you're talking draftsmanship, but there's way too much fantastic Beto stuff for that to make any sense on like a holistic level.

I will say that I am totally burned out on the Fritz storyline, too many characters that I can't be bothered to figure out.

I started skipping through those parts once I got to New Stories #6 or so.

Yeah, his work has become real scattershot over the last 10 years. It's frustrating because he cranks out way more material than Jaime, but a lot of it is fairly incoherent.

TBF, I don't even bother to try keeping up with Beto's extra-L&R work these days. Except Blubber which was...um, really something. A cry for help, perhaps?

I bailed on Beto after Vol. 1 (when I began buying the Jaime-only books for Vol. 2). He's just not for me. I read one or two of Gilbert's stories in "New Stories"; one of them really disturbed me, in an "I wish I could un-read that" kind of way. (I think it turned out to be "just a movie" at the end, but that didn't save it.)

xxp yep... gilbert is my favorite but a lot of his stuff over the last decade is sub-par. there was an interview a couple of years ago where he said he had been doing so much because he needed the money.

jesus get the guy a patreon account or something. So fucking depressing when artists that brilliant are raking in the money and living like the kings they deserve to be.

excuse me, AREN'T

FYI, Fanta having a Cyber Monday sale -- 30% off "just about everything". (Wanna cyber?)

Goddammit, Fantagraphics.

haha my thoughts exactly

Well, I'm against anything that might give Johnny Ryan a wider audience

I'm hate-watching "High Fidelity" (2000); one of the record store clerks (the guy who's not Jack Black) is wearing a hella cool L&R t-shirt beneath an unbuttoned flannel.

New book with a Jaime cover: https://i.harperapps.com/covers/9780062476807/y648.jpg

Looks like he took a quick stab at replicating "Death of Speedy"-era Locas, but without much attention to detail (Izzy's legs just look weird).

I went to college with Hillary Chute. FYI

Just checked out her CV – pretty distinguished.

Looks like you guys were in college the exact same years I was... I always like seeing people my age doing interesting stuff. Sometimes I feel like most folks you "hear about" are at least 10 years older or younger.

Goddammit, Fantagraphics

half price sale on gift vouchers this week

Been working my way through the Golden Age of Batman stories, and it's becoming evident how much of an influence Dick Sprang's style was on Gilbert.

This is from Detective #93, published in 1944. Just look at these panels, the way the characters are positioned in the foreground is so Beto.

https://i.imgur.com/svwUBaP.png
https://i.imgur.com/82x9s29.png

I just read a 1985 issue of Legion of Super-Heroes that Joe Orlando pencilled, and it’s striking how much his art (while not very polished) reminds me of Jaime’s... particularly Jaime’s sci-fi/superhero stories. Is it possible Orlando was an influence? Going by his Wikipedia page, it doesn’t look like Orlando did a ton of superhero work (and a lot of what he worked on in that vein seems to have been in the mid-’80s, well after L&R debuted).

It's possible. Orlando drew a bunch of sci fi in his EC days and did some superhero work for DC & Marvel in the 60s.

Picked up most recent 3 issues and jfc Beto’s output has really declined - shaky linework, incoherent plots and dialogue ugh. A bummer. Jaime otoh just gets better and better. Love the return of silly sf material.

I stopped buying Beto collections in volume 3, but I've given up on the series altogether in v4 and am back to waiting for Xaime's collection.

I haven't read any Jaime since Love Bunglers! I probably should

Love Bunglers is what prompted me to get the latest issues tbh, it was so good

I finally started the New Stories. The hour glass figure of Beto's Sad Girl\Killer is disturbing to look at. Jaime's hardly shy with the exaggerated curvy figures either but I don't picture Vivian breaking in half at the waist.

I never read more than a few pages of Beto's stuff prior to finishing all 8 New Stories just now but I couldn't get into any of it. Meanwhile, Jaime was absolutely killing it. His panels are all like perfectly balanced mini-paintings. He captures a lot of fluid body language. People aren't cut-n-paste statues. Jaime's story-telling remains strong as ever. His mini sci-fi "Princess Animus" is pretty damn cool.

Looks like a collection of Jaime’s current “reunion” storyline is coming in March: https://www.amazon.com/This-How-You-See-Countryman/dp/168396182X

Meanwhile — I wasn’t aware that these “Complete Love & Rockets” volumes were still being published; this one seems to collect “Ti-Girls” and “Love Bunglers”: https://www.amazon.com/Angels-Magpies-Love-Rockets-Library/dp/1683960904

(I’m still not clear if the stories about Tonta’s family from “New Stories” have ever been collected; but guess it doesn’t matter, for my purposes...)

Fantagraphics’ mobile website is unusable

Site crashed while trying to calculate the infinite permutations of ways to read the L&R saga.

tbh two days ago a Fanta employee texted me that someone phoned the office wanting to buy "all of Love & Rockets" and I put together an email explaining the closest-to-possible best-format in-print way of doing so

What about the page count of Los Bros
How did it get so high?
I wonder if an ILXor knows how many books to buy

wrong ilxor

You lay claim to the occupation if not the designation itself.

I'd like to see what you told them, sic (unless you already did upthread and I missed it)

At this point, the digests (the Love and Rockets Library, I guess they're called) are pretty much definitive. They're a few years behind at this point but I'm pretty sure they collect everything. Vol. 13 (Angels and Magpies) is the most recent one I own, maybe the last one they put out (nb, I haven't bought them all because I have the entire original set of vol. 1 collections plus the Luba hardcover and a ton of original issues, can only justify so many double- and triple-dips before it just gets ridiculous).

yeah angels and magpies is the most recent one.

also, the digests are the way to go unless you really need to keep up with what they're doing lately.

Do the digests have the same page dimensions as other formats? I've never seen them in the flesh, but had the impression they were somewhat miniaturized(?)

they are smaller than the original (and latest) series, but similarly sized as the "new stories" series... amazon says they are 7.4 x 9.2 inches.

Yeah I mean you can see why the bigger size is preferred —

https://imgur.com/download/pesuwfS/

the picture appears for me in your first post.

nuts, sorry

yeah, the answer I'd give someone trying to buy the best version for themselves to read is different to the answer I'd give someone at the publisher trying to supply as many formally-in-print volumes as possible. there are still some of the larger old books from Volume 1 in the discount room at the Fanta bookstore that are no longer inventoried by the warehouse, too.

even the seventh volume of the Library editions is OOP, and while several of the larger Xaime hardcovers are still available, you have to double up with Library collections sometimes.

meanwhile, the Library books are well over a decade behind on collecting Beto, and I also listed all his in-print books (by theme) from Vertigo and Dark Horse and D&Q in case the customer wanted to know about those too.

Julio's Day is OOP already too. Certain issues of L&R vol 3, L&R vol 4, and Blubber are also unavailable.

(I skipped Yeah! because he didn't write it, it looks awful in B&W, and I hate the binding.)

hate to say it but I think I've given up on it all.

I know a pirate that might hook you back in

Bwahahah evilness rulez!

I don't know how inclined I'd be to make the effort if I hadn't kept up with it as it was being released (since the '90s anyway), but having kept up with it I can say that it's most definitely worth the effort (except maybe caveat emptor with Beto's stuff from vol. 2 on).

yeah, Dan just buy the tall Jaime collections and forget Beto (or start that Patreon for him). Jaime's 2010s are his strongest decade ever.

and that's for a guy who had Jaime's '80s, '00s and '90s

and if you miss '80s Beto, try his The Twilight Children (drawn by Darwyn Cooke) on Vertigo.

Also, just to be clear, I think it's possible that Beto's volume 1 highs meet or exceed Jaime's (wrt writing if not draftsmanship). Love some of that material so much, and a lot of the Palomar-related material directly after is quite good. Also love the experimental Beto stuff collected in Fear of Comics (mostly culled from New Love iirc) a great deal. He's done some good work in recent years, but it's a mixed bag. It's just much easier to recommend, like, the entirety of Jaime's output sans reservations.

I've been sorta itching to re-read Jaime from the beginning again, but don’t know when I’ll find the time

I think it's possible that Beto's volume 1 highs meet or exceed Jaime's etc

absolutely, I liked Beto even before before Jaime clicked for me in my late teens - but after the FORTUNATO! era, his obsessions have become too niche for me to really connect even with effort. I can enjoy a single read of a story or a Fritz b-movie or an ultraviolence graphic novel or w/e, but I'm never going to get anything more out of re-reading them.

(his recent non-L&R work is a little more accessible, and the new Palomar stories in the current series were promising, but man, there's just too much ~stuff~ and not enough focus)

I started as a Jaime fan (punk rock teen, more accessible) but moved towards favoring Beto, esp circa Poison River and New Love/Fear of Comics stuff, but it all just spiraled out of control for me. I figure when I have some time, on my death bed, I'll get all the collections and read them all.

Just FYI, y'all, having undertaken the re-read several times over, I can report that it doesn't involve that significant a time investment.

Maybe I’ll give it a go, when I’m done with my current re-watch of the original 2 seasons of “Twin Peaks” (...then I’ll revisit all the early R.E.M. albums, for a “teenage me” trifecta).

Starting on pg. 1 of the whole shebang — “Mechan-X Starring Maggie Race Hopey (by Izzy Ruebens)” — it’s kind of astounding how consistent it is with the rest of the series to come. Mag & Hope’s dialogue “sounds” just like those two, as we’ll always know them... Maggie even kind of looks like Vicki Glori.

(Huh, Vicki and Rena are mentioned two pages later — Vicki defeating Rena, “She used the ropes!,” etc. So much of the storyline was there at the inception...)

The long Mechanics story is an early masterpiece... first of many, I suppose.

“100 Rooms” isn’t Jaime’s best, but it’s cool to read the TPB version with an eye to the panels he added in ’86 (they’re not hard to notice). He really added some depth to the story.

Closing out Vol. 2 — “Toyo’s Request” is a story I haven’t given a lot of attention in the past, but it feels like a transition to Jaime’s “mature style”... both in the economy of the storytelling, as well as the terrific layouts and art (particularly the panels of Rena driving thru the desert, and fighting Bull Marie). I guess these are Jaime’s first real wrestling action scenes in the series.

The Rocky & Fumble story at the end of the book is (of course) delightful...

Everything really snaps into place with “The Lost Women”... the confidence & accomplishment both in Jaime’s art (seemingly every pose of every figure) and narrative (covering all the core characters, in multiple locations) is hugely impressive.

The “realism” and emotional stakes are heightened, both in the Mechanics setting and the “back at home” scenes... you have the sense of something richer being made out of familiar elements. (It’s also cool to notice characters being introduced in the Locas world who will take center stage in stories to come, still years down the road.)

The Locas/Locos stories in Vol. 6 are classic (...Rand Race takes Mag & Hope to lunch; Joey goes looking for his Ape Sex record; Mag & Hope move in with Terry; etc.). This is really the beginning of "peak Jaime," leading into Death of Speedy. Also the first appearances of Doyle and Danita.

appreciating these flashbacks, ty, had forgotten about the "looking for the Ape Sex record" story

Sure — I always think of “The Return of Ray D.” + “The Death of Speedy Ortiz” as the masterpiece they are, but the other stories in this book are so great, as well. “Jerusalem Crickets,” the pitch-perfect punk rock tour story ("If you were really hard core, you'd have thrown a full bottle."); segueing into Tex & Hopey's friendship and weird visit with Penny at Costigan Manor... Maggie & Ray getting together, followed by Mag’s ringside tour with Tia Vicki (as her “accountant”); and then everything coming together (for now), on both coasts, in "Valley of the Polar Bears."

This is the first L&R volume I encountered (early in high school), and it still feels like the heart of it all.

(Bonus note: this read-through is the first time I've had a phone at hand to search the snippets of lyrics that the characters rqndomly sing, or which float up from a boombox on an apartment floor, etc. I never knew what most of these songs were until now — Ray listens to the Replacments; young Maggie sings Hank Williams with the words slightly skewed; etc.)

I also moved forward to the “Isabel in Mexico” story... I know this is a banal point, but now that I’m a father, the stuff involving babies/kids has become super affecting to me.

here's a downloadable compilation of all the IRL songs from Locas in L&R volume 1

Ah, that’s awesome!

I also have a spotify playlist for this.

https://open.spotify.com/user/olken2000/playlist/2IsHUH6FGygjkU7BWVOx35?si=5GSq9Zc4So6WHwf7Keasgw

young Maggie sings Hank Williams with the words slightly skewed

“my eyes are still curly and my hair is still blue” <3<3<3

That’s the one! haha

(Thanks, Moodles — gonna listen right now)

J’G/Jug (Pronounced Jig)

I've always wondered if that's a real slang term or something Jaime made up.

lol same

it's real, and it's spectacular

I forgot that, in “Wig Wam Bam,” Jaime actually begins to ID the songs at the bottom of the page.

This flashback scene at “Lois’s” house still cracks me up (“Uh, how about a... a... platypus?”).

I’ve always loved the scene where Nami walks in on Doyle in the shower. That “worlds collide” scenario — a crusty, homeless punk in Daffy’s upper–middle-class home (which looks just like a friend’s childhood house in Thousand Oaks; at least the parts you see of it) — is so “narratively resonant” for me.

The "Nan Tucker" stuff at the end of Wig Wam Bam is super bizarre, but it's such a great longform story... particularly everything happening back at home with Ray, Danita, Doyle, etc. I love Doyle walking out of town at the end, casting his shadow on all the sleeping characters as he passes by.

I guess many of the gang's East Coast adventures have a slightly surreal, fantastical (and sometimes sinister) vibe -- including the visits with Penny, the wrestling tour, etc. It's sort of the reverse of a longstanding narrative cliche, in which characters travel west to "reinvent" themselves, encounter strange people with constructed identities, etc. In the "Locas" world, California is home of the mundane, familiar, everyday life; and the East Coast is where shit gets crazy and people are "fake."

A lot of the "Locas" storyline (I'm realizing in this re-read) involves characters being haunted by events in their past, trying to fix things so they can "move forward," etc. (I think this theme is expressed even more explicitly later, with stories like Ghost of Hoppers and The Love Bunglers.) And this isn't limited to cases of childhood trauma, or Izzy's personal history, etc. -- it also applies to relatively "well-adjusted" characters, like Rena and Vicki Glori, and decisions they made or things that happened to them in adulthood.

Anyway, it's terrific how Jaime develops this theme by cutting back and forth between flashbacks & present day, starting early in the series; so that the "past" is always right there, bleeding into the present, nipping at the characters' heels, revealed to the reader simultaneously...

(One minor note is that the timeframe gets a little funky here... at the end of Wig Wam Bam, one of the kids posting the flyers says that it's been five years since Hopey's band broke up on their East Coast tour... which matches the passage of time IRL, but it doesn't seem to fit with when the milk cartons started appearing, during Maggie's reunion w/Hopey in "Ninety-Three Million Miles From the Sun." I think that was "two years later," and it wasn't long before the events of Wig Wam Bam.)

I’m reading “Chester Square” now, in the individual issues. I think I only read it once or twice (never bought the collection). It’s pretty rough seeing Maggie this degraded.

In “We Want the World and We Want It Bald,” Hopey says she hasn’t seen Hoppers “in about six years”; so I guess the timeframe does check out. Didn’t seem like she was crashing on couches for that long...

Interesting retcon in issue #46 — circling back to the very beginning.

Also, this is the issue where Jaime & Beto do each others’ characters. The results speak for themselves, ‘Nuff Said.

FYI -- (most?) everything is 40% on Fantagraphics.com today. #wannacyber?

The "Penny Century" miniseries (as collected in Locas in Love) finds 40-ish Ray living in Hollywood, grousing about young people, and serving as narrator for long stretches. I never loved this move, because (a) it made me kind of dislike Ray as a "person," and (b) he seems to serve as something as a stand-in for Jaime, the writer (at least when he makes observations about music, culture, etc.)... which is very on-brand for comics, but doesn't quite feel L&R to me.

On the other hand, I like the stories about Negra (H.R. Costigan's estranged teenage daughter); and Jaime's casual, short-form pieces in this book are great.

(As a sidebar: Penny's floating all around, but what happened to her two kids? I don't remember if they're seen/addressed again, other than in the fantastical Ti-Girls story. Guess I'll find out...)