Love & Rockets comix: Locas vs. Palomar

Can't choose.

Locas, but not by much.

Palomar for a couple reasons. It hit its stride right away, while Locas took a while to find its voice. The further stories collected in the Beyond Palomar and Luba books took an already great story line and kicked it up several notches. They are both great artists, but I think Gilbert is sometimes underrated compared to Jaime.

I realize I may be biased a bit here because I've only followed Locas up through the Perla La Loca book. I'm sure I'll be amazed once I read the next books.

Locas, not really close.

Locas, better pics

Locas, unfair because I always got Jaime's book comps...

Palomar all the way. I have never warmed to Locas. While Jaime is probably a better artist, it never seemed like there was much to the Locas stories other than attractive bi-curious girls, a subject that will forever be of great interest to comics fans.

Locas, Locas, Locas. Less for the Mechanics stuff than the likes of The Death of Speedy Ortiz and House of Raging Women. I was obsessed with it at university - my first online password was Hopey.

I have never warmed to Locas. While Jaime is probably a better artist, it never seemed like there was much to the Locas stories other than attractive bi-curious girls, a subject that will forever be of great interest to comics fans.

OMG, the wrongness of this statement. Mainly belied by the fact that Locas was so beloved by so many girls who wouldn't have gone there if it had just been typical comic book guy wank fodder. Hopey and Maggie and their *friendship* (as well as their on-off sex partnership) was just so emotionally honest and carefully documented. Despite the occasional burst of sci fi every time Penny Century stepped onpage, it was just such an accurate depiction of that kind of counterculture American punX0r hardcore scene proto riot grrrls. I loved the band politics and the personal dynamics and everything.

I did love Palomar, but it wasn't quite as real to me, and quite as full on depiction of my actual life aged about 15-22 in the way that Locas was.

For the past two or three years i've been tagging "HOPPERS 13" all over campus

Palomar. Prefer Beto's art.

Locas. It was close though.

tie

As I've aged, Palomar has started to show its seams more and more to me. Beto's surrealist moves have started to seem like empty gestures to me. Jaime, the uber-classicist, does much more for me now.

When they started, Beto was way underrated, but starting maybe in the late 80s he became overrated, til now its like some kind of provocative thing to prefer Locas.

Locas for me. Beto says there may be a movie in the works! Live action or animated he would not say. Perhaps another poll?

This is really tough. Locas has more of a sweet spot in my heart, but Palomar might be better. Poison River is just amazing. I will need to re-read both of them to make a sound judgment. I will leave work now and do just that.

palomar - dirty vicar otm

Poison River is just amazing

the amount of 'show don't tell' in this kinda broke my brain

God this thread came as a shock - I haven't honestly thought about Los Bros for the longest time, but me and my ex used to be obsessed..... so long ago, it seems; our daughter's middle name is Esperanza and she's 21 this year.....*weeps*

....so i guess the answer is Locas

What does your daughter think of L&R?

She's never read any of them AFAIK - as soon as I posted the above, I figured I should suggest it to her, but parental recommendations are often resisted at this age....her mother has most of what was a joint collection, so maybe I'll see if she might do it. It would be interesting to see what she thinks actually.

Does she know she was named after comic book character?

It's overharsh to make me choose, couldn't there be "Locas, barely" and "Palomar, barely" options in addition? But yah we need an answer, possibly.

Locas, barely. H&M are such everyday mythical heroes.

Xp

Yes....although she wishes it was after Oscar Wilde's mother instead. (Irish history and Wilde are twin obsessions, and Ma Wilde wrote fiery patriotic verse as 'Speranza')

H&M are such everyday mythical heroes.

Great point. I've rarely felt such strong affection for fictional characters.

Locas. Palomar has never fully clicked; maybe something to look forward to. Locas though has been around my life for 20 years - there's nothing else like it for me, certainly nothing else that's so good for so long, and gets the sunshine energy and heartbreak of youth, then late youth's melancholy, then the gloomier tones (and weight gain) of the later 20s and 30s. Shaken by the depth of affection I felt for all its characters when I read through the last round of republications.

It looks gorgeous too - I prefer Jaime's pop classicism to Gilbert's stuff. Clean, minimal, thrillingly expressive with very little.

That's great about Esperanzadaughterofsonofstan.

Locas for me. I've read all of Gilbert's Palomar stuff up to and including L&RX, which is excellent, kinda like an immigrant LA version of Short Cuts (apologies for the slightly lazy comparison). Poison River is indeed brilliant, as is Human Diastrophism. Not really got into the continued Luba and family adventures after that... wondering if he went off the boil with that world and was more interested in the surrealist stuff. I do like his weird stuff in the last couple of L&R though.
But anyway, as impressive as Palomar can be - and this thread has reminded how magnificent it can be - I don't love its characters in the same way as I do Maggie, Hopey, Penny, Ray, Izzy et al. While their lives are obviously rather different to my own (punk 80s California seems impossibly exotic to a 29 year old from central Scotland) the emotional honesty about relationships, the disappointments of life etc has universal appeal. I'd rate Perla La Loca over Girl From HOPPERS - just. Wig Wam Bam is a lot of people's favourite Locas story, although Ghost of Hoppers quite possibly tops it. They're all so much fun though, even the Mechanics stuff isn't that bad.
I only discovered L&R three years ago, but it didn't take me long to fall head first for it. Think I might re-read them this summer.

My love of Palomar over Locas may partly be explained by how I came to the books. I bought the first collection (Music for Mechanics or something), which has stuff from both brothers (and also from Norbert). The Gilbert stuff is complete rubbish (weirdo SF nonsense), apart from a three page or so piece set in Palomar which I just loved. The Jaime stuff, while nicely drawn, is just boring.

Later when a local comic shop was selling L&R collections cheap I bought Blood of Palomar (an all-Gilberto book), because I had seen it recommended somewhere, and I completely loved it. That led me to go back and buy previous books, if they had lots of Gilberto content, so I have ended up only reading snippets of Jaime stuff, largely I think from before he hit his stride. As discussed above, I found the M&H stuff boring, but I found the wrestling stuff rather affecting. The really great Jaime stuff I have read, though, is the Rocket Roads (sp?) SF story, which seemed incredibly poignant. I wish there was a whole book of that.

"The Death of Speedy Ortiz" ftw.

Palomar.

I hope this ends in a tie.

Really I mark down Jaime's work solely due to the weaker earlier comics, but outside of that, they are both so great and complement each other so well that it is a shame to choose one or the other.

Is it ok to be upset that the Locas storyline seemed to promise a lot of sex but v rarely delivered?

Yes.

On the other hand, that's one thing I like about it.

I'd just read some "Strangers in Paradise" (mistake) before reading "Locas" and between the two I was like "are lesbians not allowed to be shown having sex???? just show me some fucking sexing for the love of love for love's sake." A frustrating month that was.

Even "Dykes to Watch Out For," Allison cut out 90% of the sex by the time the Clinton administration started. And there wasn't a ton there to begin with.

In retrospect there is WAY more actual sex in the Beto stuff! SiP from start to finish lacked explicit scenes but it copped out pretty much every time, straight or lesbian.

Dude Maggie and Hopey just had mad sex in the Penny Century thing I just read

Speaking of which, I recently got the Beto's Birdland collection as a gift, and it is probably the most graphically pornographic comic I've ever seen. Made be realize just how many multi-gallon jizz shots he leaves out of the regular Fritz/Petra storyline.

I hate Strangers In Paradise so much. It's like he took Locas, meticulously excised all the awesome, and added a quart of cringe. Hate it!!!

It truly is the fucking worst.

^^absofuckinglutely

As far as sexing in Locas, when I was 15 or 16 that Maggie/Hopey scene with "We haven't j'gged in quite a long time..." was like brain-fryingly dirty to me at the time.

Beto kind of went too far over the top at times with the fuck scenes. It got sort of boring.

The Luba book has tons of sex, but it still manages to have an interesting and entertaining plot. I was pretty amazed by the whole thing.

As far as sexing in Locas, when I was 15 or 16 that Maggie/Hopey scene with "We haven't j'gged in quite a long time..." was like brain-fryingly dirty to me at the time.

YES! That for me was one of the key scenes of the first decade's worth of Locas.

I'd hi five you but that might be getting a little crepey.

Not even really for hotttness, just for the depth of characterization that he started to bring to the book around 86-87. It could have gone completely soap opera right about then, but he really started showing how good a writer he was.

No I know, was jk

dirty sex in comics. joy.

"dirty sex," wtf prude?

soap opera stuff

can't tell if you're approving or disapproving

I'd say trolling.

I'm trolling. But you, WmC said the comic could have gone soap opera and instead there was some sexing that was brain-frying dirty at the time... I'm suggesting that option is also soap opera stuff

Where are these soap operas with hot gay sex?

start looking into yaoi

I've seen the future

I said *hot* gay sex, Nhex.

I had the curious experience yesterday of being on a four-hour car ride with a driver who decided to tell me about every Naruto slash she'd ever written. -_-

Lorax, you're conflating my posts and Jon Lewis'. I thought the scene was hot, but not brain-fryingly dirty.

My bad. I secretly want to read all this stuff

(I had read Manara's Click! and Butterscotch, and a few other hardcore comics, by this time, so a few boobs weren't enough to make me flip out.) The hotness was because a couple of fairly standard 2-D comedy-adventure characters were suddenly in a mature sexual relationship. The fact that the sex was 99% off-panel made it even sexier.

xpost -- I hope you will! You can tell from this thread that it comes highly recommended.

I think I would read the ones with characters closer to my age... mid 20s. I gave my little sister Blankets for Christmas. It was good but the lovers were too young

Get one of the ones where the characters are forty, but there's a flashback scene to when they're 25, and tear out all of thepages except for the flashback

How old are the folks in Palomar comics? I might be able to handle 3Os and 4Os. It's teenagers and maybe early 20s characters I am weary of

Gilbert's and Jaime's universes are similar -- they cover decades, characters age from little kids to middle age. Wanting to only read about characters in their mid to late 20s is kind of o_O imho.

I just don't want to read teenage characters coming of age if the whole thing is mostly late teen years

I think what you will find is that the Palomar stories are not at all teenage coming-of-age stories. They are far more like Gabriel Garcia Marquez crossed with a lurid soap opera.

The Locas stories have some coming-of-age elements, especially early on, but they are much more realistic and ambiguous than a generic teen story. Locas is really about Maggie muddling through her life over 40-odd years and going through all the highs and lows of everyday existence.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

i want the option to answer this poll in a year or so... over the past year, i've read as much gilbert stuff as possible, from heartbreak soup up through the luba book and the new fritz book, and i think it's all amazing. i have read much less jaime stuff, just because i haven't gotten to it yet (i came to L&R pretty late, i'll confess). still, i can't imagine liking it more than palomar and beyond, but that's probably more a function of me reading one first than anything else.