Love & Rockets - classic or dud

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.