Love & Rockets - classic or dud

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...)