Love & Rockets - classic or dud

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