Love & Rockets - classic or dud

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also the upcoming Maria M book, which, in typical Hernandez fashion, collects both Maria M vol. 1 AND the previously-unpublished Maria M vol. 2.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.

also it’s a spoiler of a comic from four or five years ago

Maybe the Hopey marriage stuff was boring and I forgot they were married. The way Morrisp put an exclamation mark after “Hopey Married the glasses lady”, I thought it was something new.

We knew Hopey was married with a kid at the end of Love Bunglers, but I don’t think we saw who her wife was until now (...“now” meaning 2015 — when this story debuted in New Stories #7 — as sic pointed out).

...Man, flipping back to that page size / paper stock really drives home the superiority of these large-format reprint editions.

I can barely read the first volume of the library editions, the typeface is so small

My copy of the Tonta hardcover arrived. The material is drawn from a few issues of New Stories (#5-6); but it sure looks good printed all big and stuff.

this really had me thinking about beto's b-movie books
https://hyperallergic.com/511754/la-flor-mariano-llinas/

The Tonta book is good, I recommend it as a one-off, especially for folks who haven't been following the series closely (it stands on its own, and Jaime's "main" characters don't even appear, so you won't be stressed about continuity/catch-up). The story has a lightness and wit that have been absent in the recent tales of the Locas crew.

That said, there is some timeline weirdness here (which devoted readers will notice) -- a flashback at the end retroactively & roughly nails down the age of a few characters, making them "too young" to have been the adults they were when they first appeared in the early 2000s. This funkiness is clearly a byproduct of telling an ongoing story in small installments over many years; I'm sure Jaime could avoid it if he cared, but artistic license rightly takes precedent.

yeah, I was really impressed at how well the Tonta book held together as a single story. the one thing that didn't play was the trial taking place in a few seconds' reading, instead of being spaced out amidst other stories, but oh well.

I agree the ending is kind of abrupt.

Btw, I realized you can fudge the timeline if you pretend the story takes place several years before publication -- it can't be set any earlier than 2008, as one plot point involves a Twilight movie in theaters. But I think it was probably supposed to be set in 2012, when Jaime started writing it, and when the last of those movies came out... and that late date is def. incompatible with Vivian's age. I know this doesn't matter at all.

Getting super forensic (sorry) -- the only Twilight movie released in the summertime (the story's setting) was Part 3, in 2010... I'm gonna satisfy myself by calculating that puts the flashback around 1996, which is just far back enough for Viv to have been a (very) young adult when Maggie & Ray meet her in 2001. I don't know how this timing works with Angel's post-Ti Girls storyline (her move to Texas, then back to CA), but I'm not gonna worry about it.

My books are all in another hemisphere so I can't read back & check, but are you just judging by Vivian? could it be that she was a bratty 19-year-old with a body that clouds men's minds in her first appearances, and is a bratty 31-year-old with etc etc in Tonta?

lol xpost

haha, yeah -- I mean she *could* have been 19 back then, but it seemed like she had been on the scene a little longer than that, based on her personal history (she had dated that comic-book guy Vartan at some point in the past, etc.). But at this point, we've winnowed it down to where I'm just splitting hairs over a few years.

Apparently this is an hour-long video interview w/Jaime; I may try to listen while I work later today:

https://www.comicsbeat.com/graphic-novel-club-jaime-hernandez-explores-the-cultural-inspirations-behind-tonta/

Sweet! Gonna watch sinecright now.

I really enjoyed this recent interview with Ed Piskor about Jaime's early days.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qTuLb-tflSk

Stumbled across this old print ad while reading sixties Batmans. Given the art style and the fact he's called "BEM", could this be the secret origin of Los Bros Hernandez?

https://www.hyperborea.org/journal/wp-content/uploads/2007/09/bem.png

https://majorspoilers.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Love-And-Rockets-1-Feature.jpg

I feel like this vaguely rips off the comic’s title & original logo (or maybe it’s just a coincidence):

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/1/1a/LoveAndMonstersPoster.jpeg

More likely a rip of the 2006 Dr Who episode Love & Monsters

Given the art style and the fact he's called "BEM", could this be the secret origin of Los Bros Hernandez?

"BEM" is an old sci-fi acronym for "bug-eyed monster". Presumably that's where Gilbert got it from, since, you know, he uses it as a name for a sci-fi monster. :)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bug-eyed_monster

https://www.fantagraphics.com/products/queen-of-the-ring-wrestling-drawings-by-jaime-hernadez (sic)

This best-of book spotlights the women who are often ignored in pro wrestling in 125 full color illustrations: pin-ups, action shots, fake wrestling magazine covers, all presented in a large paperback format that echoes the lucha libre magazines of the 1960s. Hernandez also discusses the work in an interview with fellow cartoonist Katie Skelly.

Just learned Jaime did a poster for that band that adopted his character name:

https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-v_ivFcMEk8I/WzJIdbK94gI/AAAAAAAAuFo/WOjc8YrDzTMVsjwWYxKmCk9WQ9216bM6QCLcBGAs/s1600/unnamed%2B%25281%2529.jpg

always wondered if he was involved with that / approved it

Def remember Los Bros were none too happy abt the UK group Love & Rockets, understandably so

If I were a curious new L&R reader who clicked on this "handy guide" to the series (which Fanta just promoted in today's newsletter), I would probably close my browser and forget about being an L&R reader!

(I guess the core Where to Start With Love and Rockets sections (for Jaime and Gilbert, respectively) of this page are better, but the impact of the entire page is arguably even more off-putting.)

One little side note, which I also mentioned on things you were shockingly old when you realized, Speedy Ortiz more or less rhymes with Sadie Dupuis.

it's fucking hard to get people into l&r these days and it's also hard to lend out the books because if you walk with my v1 of anything, it will be the sixth copy i've lost that way!

lol, yeah, Fanta's reader's guide is insane. Just list the digests and then have a 'wanna know more?' link to the full publication history.

I binged L&R during the shutdown. Jaime stayed remarkably consistent. Berto lost me when he left Palomar. Eventually it turned into a comic obsessed with huge breasted women in LA.

kinda with you there. i like his more gonzo shit. Blubber is impressively unhinged.

Blubber is completely unhinged.

I do like his experimental, gonzo stuff but generally, yeah, it's safe to stop with the Palomar material when it no longer takes place in Palomar. Before that, though, he and Jaime's worlds were just about equal imo.