Love & Rockets - classic or dud

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...)

Jaime writes so well about teenage girls -- characters like Nami, Negra, and (later) Tonta -- who are "ordinary" suburban kids, but maybe a little smarter/more perceptive than their friends. He presents these characters in a realistic, matter-of-fact way, respecting their emotional lives without "romanticizing" them or overplaying their drama. It's highly impressive for a male writer, IMO.

Re: “To Be Announced,” the series of gently surreal, 6-panel “young Ray” vignettes — the “H-bomb” installment deserves a f’in Eisner Award.

I appreciate your live-'blogging' fwiw. It'll probably still be another couple years until I'm ready for my umpteenth read-through or I'd play along at home.

Thanks, glad I'm not being annoying...

(I ordered The Love Bunglers collection in the Black Friday sale, so I can re-read it in that format and see if anything's been added, etc. Haven't re-read the New Stories material since publication, other than Ti-Girls.)

Material was added for the collection, which was then carried over to the most recent Jaime digest.

Hey -- looks like after the next Jaime book comes out in March (Is This How You See Me?), Tonta gets her own collection in July!

After all that stuff's been collected, I would toss those "New Stories" issues right in the recycling bin (LOL) -- but one of them contains a published letter from me! :P

I ebayed all of the New Stories, confident that I would not cry if I never get to read the Beto parts again

I would cry if I had to read the new Beto parts again.

Jaime really gets into the 8-panel grid in L&R Vol. II.

...beyond that, his storytelling is also much more "decompressed" than it was in Vol. I. Reading straight through, it's very apparent how Jaime began taking a different approach in the new series.

I think I’m also “appreciating” these Ghost of Hoppers stories a little more, knowing where things are headed in the long term. Not that I disliked them the first time around... but, for example, the business with “The Frogmouth” doesn’t feel as random, knowing that Vivian (and her extended family) will become mainstays of the series.

Maggie’s rootlessness / restlessness in this period also feels less like she’s “treading water,” after seeing how things end up in the New Stories. It just took a long time (in real, publication time) to get there.

Reading The Education of Hopey Glass now -- great stuff. But Maggie mentions that she lived with Ray "for two years," which squares with my perceptions and gets me bugged again about the post-Wigwam Bam timeline that I was hung up as I read it (and which had me flipping back and forth, trying to come up with a "No-Prize" type explanation for how Jaime somehow shoehorns in a few extra years for Hopey to have been living back east).

This time, I try searching the Internets ("love and rockets timeline"), and find this page: https://www.zompist.com/loveroc3.html#slip

Time slip: Jaime just took too long to draw WB; the events could have taken as much as a year, but hardly three years. So far he hasn't pegged any post-WWB events strictly to the calendar; if he does, the characters will have simply blipped over two or more years or so without anything happening.

Thanks, Bud! So I'm not crazy. I think there are actually two time-slips, though:

* Hopey's band goes on tour, and Mag & Ray get together, circa 1988. Mag & Hope reunite in "Nintey-Three Million Miles From the Sun" -- which was published in '88, but takes place after a two-year "jump" (as marked by dialogue, plus stuff like the age of Danita's son, Daffy's move to college, etc.) -- so it's now 1990 in the L&R-verse. The gang stays with Penny, then Ray goes home and gets together with Danita (he knows it's over with Maggie).
* When Wigwam Bam begins, it's now 1990 in real life, but could only be a few months, at most, after "Nintety-Three Million Miles..." (this is also when the milk cartons start appearing). Mag & Hope have their fight outside the party ("Just 'cause you can turn off your 'ethnic' half whenever it's goddamn convenient!"); this is the last time they'll see each other until the final page of Vol. I.
* The rest of Wigwam Bam happens. In the "Epilogue," published in '93, some kids say they "almost" snuck Hopey's picture into the National Missing Kids Center when the broke up on tour, but "chickened out" -- "then recently, five years later, Sigi got this cool idea...". This is Jaime's major f-up; he seems to try to force the passage of time in the book to "catch up" with real-life time. I guess you're supposed pretend it was already 1993 when Wigwam Bam started... but it was clearly meant to be 1990 in the book itself, there's no way to account for those extra years.
* When we next see Maggie, in "Chester Square" (Jan. '93), we learn that she had a rough time getting out of town after her fight with Hopey. When Maggie arrives in Texas, she's had a week or so of bus travel since that fight; though she seems to have aged a few years somehow (maybe it's the haircut she got on the way).
* For the remainder of Vol. I, Maggie's in Texas -- the action seems to take place over a few months, at most. But when Hopey cycles back west, in "We Want the World..." (July '94), she says has hasn't seen Hoppers in "about six years." This is the second "time slip" -- once again, Jaime makes narrative time catch up to real-world time, but the series of events in Texas don't seem to jibe with another year having passed. Maybe I'm wrong about that one, though.

Sorry to go into such detail here; it would have driven me nuts if I didn't write it down. I think it just sticks out because Jaime's usually so careful with the chronology.

Danita’s entire relationship w/Ray somehow also happens during the “Chester Square” era (she and Elias end up joining Maggie in Texas after the breakup); so I guess I have to accept that Maggie’s in TX over a year, even though it doesn’t feel like it.

this book also has a timeline: https://copaceticcomics.com/creators/marc-sobel

I like the unbalancedness of the timeline, it's a bit like that thing as you get older, when five years can suddenly pass like a long weekend, or when you suddenly realise the last time you saw one of your best friends was 2014

Looking forward to re-reading Chester Square, I kind of glossed over that one after Wigwam Bam

Me too, I enjoyed revisiting it.

This revelation about Maggie & Ray having been longtime comics readers is... interesting? It feels like Jaime wanted to work comics culture into the book, but it doesn’t quite track with the history as we know it (it’s Penny who’s the superhero nut; and Ray seemed a bit too much of a “serious artist” type to be a comics guy). Maggie’s comics fandom does become key to Ti-Girls, anyway.

I still think the sections with Ray as narrator are a little “off”; the guy’s just kinda boring! But I guess that’s (part of) the point — to be seeing Maggie, and these other colorful characters and events, through his Joe Schmo eyes... a change in perspective.

This brief story “Tranpas pero no Trampan,” which begins with Vivian and her friend Milena auditioning to be dancers for a Spanish-language variety show, is excellent. Jaime writes some of his best dialogue for Vivian — every line of hers on pgs. 6-7 is perfect (“What do they have in this stupid fuck Valley?”). She’s increasingly interesting and complex, and (simultaneously) maybe Jaime’s least likable/“sympathetic” main character since Terry.

Meanwhile, Ray is such a nerd! Gah

On my 3rd read-through of “Ti-Girls”...
I never know quite what to make of it, though I enjoy it. I’d be interested to hear/read what Jaime has to say about it.

Next up / finally will be the Love Bunglers hardcover that recently arrived in the mail. I’m not exactly “looking forward” to revisiting that story — I remember how disturbing/depressing it is — but it’s the last piece of the puzzle (and I also remember how good it is).

I've been re-reading Maggie The Mechanic on my phone and it's a terrific (if non-purist) way of reading the story, panel by panel. Jaime's so wordy at the beginning, it might even be easier to read this way. Obvs once I reach Death of Speedy era I'll move back to the printed version. But I like reading like this a lot. It works especially well for comics like Jaime's where every panel is basically a masterpiece, and you get to look at them in isolation.

“Eeek! Somebody turn the page tap the screen! You can see my panties!”

I wonder it what felt like to Jaime to write the "Browntown" story, and put something like that out in the world. It sure hits just as hard the second time around.

When the "Love Bunglers" storyline wrapped up in New Stories, it felt like the "last Locas story"... I would have bet there was a better-than-even chance that Jaime wouldn't return to these characters. And that felt "right" to me, like he had reached a perfect stopping point. (Obviously, though, this eventually turned out not to be the case.)

The Love Bunglers is quite a book... you can really feel Jaime reaching for a tone and approach that he hasn't attempted before. There's something a little forced & expository in some of the dialogue; as if Jaime is doing more "telling" than "showing" this time, and (deliberately) choosing not to work with his greatest assets (economy, wit, brisk pacing, etc.). But the New Stories format seems to have been designed for experimentation, and I would feel lame dwelling on the few arguable missteps in remarkable works like "Ti-Girls" and "Love Bunglers."

It's a cliche (in comics, music, etc.) to talk about "an artist this far in his/her career, still taking risks like this!" (etc.) -- but that was undeniably the case with Jaime in the 2000s.

Also, the circling back to the Letty/Maggie story, this time from Letty's p.o.v., is just perfect and heartbreaking.

I didn’t realize I missed the publication of the new Jaime collection (by several months)... ordered it now (also pre-ordered the Tonta book).

See also the upcoming Maria M book, which, in typical Hernandez fashion, collects both Maria M vol. 1 AND the previously-unpublished Maria M vol. 2. Because if you aren't double (or triple or quintuple) dipping, it ain't los Bros!

Missed this recent Jaime interview, too: https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/miranda/la-et-cam-jaime-hernandez-is-this-how-you-see-me-20190504-story.html

Hopey married the glasses lady!

(I like how she calls her by a different nickname than everyone else in the world; it’s a basic but effective touch.)

The book was really good -- it's a casual, lower-key follow-up to Love Bunglers. With the flashback scenes, Jaime still manages to make the (old) history feel richer, not just retread old ground.

Some of the art is a little lacking in detail; Jaime's lines are pretty thick in places (maybe he was breaking in a new nib). I also think some of the characters are looking a little older than they should(?) -- they're folks in their early/mid-50s who look closer to their 60s (and not just the ones who have lived "rough lives," but also people like Daffy and Julie Wree). NBD though.

Help me out. If I just bought the library books I’d have everything and not need the separate novels? I haven’t read love and rockets in years because I got so confused, and pissed after buying the same thing and so many different formats. Tempted to sell everything I have and just buy all the library volumes.

Maggie and Hopey are getting older. Is there a future in which one of them might die?

Yeah, but I’m not sure when. I’m going to be 60 in October. I can see an end to this. My brain will go or my hand will go. My ideas will go. But so far it’s still working. I still got stories to tell.

the thought of either maggie and hopey dying or l&r otherwise coming to an end is not something i'd given a lot of thought to and it's surprisingly upsetting tbh

dan I think we’ve done this upthread, but the “Library” volumes collect most of everything if you don’t mind reading in that shrinkydink size.

Basically they stay at a respectful pace behind Jaime (about 7 years or so) and have completely given up on staying current or comprehensive with Beto’s output, but that’s okay because his quality control has been replaced with an untethered hose. (The latest book in the Library was a Beto, and included Luba-and-her-descendants material from 2002 to 2006.)

If I want the bigger size and get the "novels" though, will I miss stuff?

I think you get extra stuff — Jaime adds sequences, codas, etc. (but I’m not positive that those don’t also make their way into the shrinky-dinks).

I really don’t know what to make of this section of that Jaime interview:

I have to admit that with Hopey changing so much, it was hard writing her into this new story. I didn’t really like her. I thought, I don’t like her as a person. I don’t like what she’s doing. I don’t like how her life turned out. She is one of those friends you’re disappointed in.

(but I’m not positive that those don’t also make their way into the shrinky-dinks)

i think that everything in the "novels" gets collected in the library editions. since they started releasing those books the l&r publishing schedule has *generally* been:

1. initial publication of material in whatever "magazine" is currently running.

2. that stuff gets collected into large-sized hardcovers. editing usually gets done at this stage and sometimes pages are added, as morrisp mentions above. if you buy only these editions you will, for the most part, have everything.

3. several years later all of that material is collected in the smaller "library" paperbacks. the only editing happening at this point may be different ordering of stories.

Thanks for the spoiler morrisp.

I started disliking modern Hopey in the comic where she is a teacher disciplining a kid who snuck out the fence during recess. Hopey proceeds to have a laughing fit because it reminded her of her old self. That was the most unfunny thing in the world.

Nothing I wrote constitutes a spoiler — unless you don’t even want to know the vaguest background details of the setup (in which case, sorry I guess...).

“Hopey married the glasses lady”

That’s on page 1! Sorry, man.

It’s okay, better page 1 then somewhere near the end.