Love & Rockets - classic or dud

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.