Love & Rockets - classic or dud

My favorite Jaime book is "Wigwam Bam"; favorite Gilbert book is probably "Love & Rockets X," though I'm not in agreement w/ many people on that one. Maybe just go for "Palomar."

soundtrack: The Pixies' cover of "I can't forget"

It was high and fine and free, oh you should have seen us

OK. so should I just give up on "Music For Mechanics" and throw good money after bad acquiring a copy of "The Death Of Speedy"?

then they got phased out.

(3) Post LOCAS. After LOVE AND ROCKETS VOLUME 1 ended, Jaime first did an all-wrestling "Locasverse" spinoff called WHOA, NELLIE! (available as a $9.95 graphic novel). If you love the LOCAS wrestling stories, get it; if not, don't -- at least not as your first pick. Instead, move onto LOCAS IN LOVE and DICKS AND DEEDEES, which pick up the continuity threads right where LOCAS left off. (These stories originally appeared in MAGGIE AND HOPEY COLOR FUN and PENNY CENTURY.) After that, you can either wait for the next volume (coming in December), GHOST OF HOPPERS, or collect all that material in the first 10 issues of LOVE AND ROCKETS VOL. II.

Beginning with LOVE AND ROCKETS VOL. II #11, all the Jaime stories are as yet uncollected, and probably won't appear between book covers until 2008 or 2009 at the earliest.

Beto guide here.

An aside: I think I love Beto's Fear of Comics almost as much as Locas or Palomar.

and

Therefore, if you've purchased and enjoyed PALOMAR, your first stops will be LOVE AND ROCKETS VOL. 12: "POISON RIVER" (the early story of Luba) and LOVE AND ROCKETS X (a story set in then-contemporary L.A. which featured one of Luba's daughters and has since worked its way into post-Palomar continuity).

and

LOVE AND ROCKETS VOLUME 1 has about 60 pages of stories such as "BEM," "Music for Monsters," et al. (Also available much cheaper --five bucks total!-- as LOVE AND ROCKETS #1 and #2.)

and

There are four very early "Locasverse" stories in LOVE AND ROCKETS (Vol. 1) #1 which were not included in LOCAS because they were comparatively crude. As it happens, you can still buy the original 64-page LOVE AND ROCKETS #1 for only $2.50 through the Fantagraphics catalog -- or you can buy LOVE AND ROCKETS VOL. 1: MUSIC FOR MECHANICS, which reprints #1 and #2. Although this latter ploy will give you a duplicate copy of the 40-page "Mechanics" story which leads off LOCAS, the other 80 or 90 pages of comics are not collected in either LOCAS or PALOMAR, and well worth the price (especially Gilbert Hernandez's "BEM," featuring a pre-Palomar Luba.

and

There's about 100 pages of "Locasverse" stories that were cut from LOCAS because they focused on peripheral characters -- Rena Titañon wrestling stories, Penny Century larks, etc.; unfortunately for collectors, they're scattered in Volumes 2, 4, 5, and 6, which otherwise contain mostly stories collected in LOCAS and PALOMAR. (Volumes 7, 11, and 13 are COMPLETELY collected in LOCAS -- well, except for one 3-page story in Vol. 13 that didn't make the cut -- so you can ignore them.)

and

However, LOVE AND ROCKETS VOLUME 9: FLIES ON THE CEILING, while it does contain a number of pages collected in LOCAS, is a relative bonanza in this regard, with 37 pages of non-LOCAS "Locasverse" stories, including two of the very, very best: "Flies on the Ceiling" (the story of Izzy in Mexico) and "Spring 1982" (a haunting flashback to the early days of the Doyle character). Volume 9 also contains Gilbert's stunning "Frida."

He doesn't cover Mario at all, but didn't he disappear from L&R almost entirely after the first few, siphoned off into anthologies and Brain Capers and so forth? I don't remember anything non-Locasverse by Xaime at all, so he's covered. What else is there, maybe a five-page short by Beto every three books, if that? (nb: if at home I would actually check this, no belligerence intended in question!)

three volumes each for Locas and Palomar characters, then one at the end for Mario and Rocky & Fumble* and BEM and Errata Stigmata and all the other oddments. All from v1 #1-50, none of the subsequent series covered.

*(which I totally forgot about in my really-kinda-belligerent post up above)

Anyway I'm not sure what I think of it.

xp Thanks, sic – will check that out.

Yeah, I'm not traditionally a big wearer of shirts w/indicia... but lately (maybe as a "getting older" thing), I've been into the idea... searching online for band T-shirts and stuff. (Pretty sure this is my actual shirt that was stolen from a college dorm locker room c. 1994, lol)

i own and wear the #24 shirt on the regular

"This Fool" is pretty great btw

I also have a version of that shirt that I wear all the time

New York Times 40th anniversary profile:

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/19/books/love-and-rockets-hernandez-bros.html

https://static01.nyt.com/images/2022/11/10/books/00Hernandezbrothers-topart/00Hernandezbrothers-topart-superJumbo.jpg

...and the First Fifty box is $80 off plus free US shipping today

The cartoonist Adrian Tomine discovered the series in 1987, after reading “Death of Speedy Ortiz,” a story by Jaime about a Hoppers local who becomes embroiled in a gang war. “I thought it was the greatest comic I’d ever seen,” he said.

Me too!

(well, actually a few years later, when I came across Vol. 7 of the collections)

I'd love to have that box but I have almost all of the first 50 in floppies, not sure I can justify it for the last volume.

i feel like i have the first volume in like three different formats already but i wouldn't turn down that box set if anyone wants to get it for me

It’s nice to see L&R get this round of 40th Anniversary props. If they do pack it in after another 10 years (as they say in that article), I’m sure there’ll be more of the same… then probably a movie, five years later.

Sale on the box is over, but 40% off just about every other L&R book, magazine or floppy today only

(same goes for any Fanta author)

Just bought some Peanutz

ooh thx

finally got the new woodring

A third sale: 20% off all pre-orders today, which includes the next digest/Library collection (the first in five years!), the next Psychodrama Illustrated, and a Fritz b-movie triple-feature.

Now this I like: https://www.fantagraphics.com/products/love-and-rockets-tote-bag

Fantabucks sale in two weeks: plan accordingly

Enjoyed the Kayfabe interview with Gilbert, it was funny when he said there was a period when he used to read Alter Ego to wash away a reliably depressing issue of Comics Journal.

Sorry this is random, but when I saw this great rendering of the "Luma" character in profile, I thought – "wow, that's pure Jaime":

https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/111/492/064/429/156/895/original/eef14dfe3115e58c.png

(Idk who specifically penciled it; this page says "Cover Artists: Curt Swan • George Klein • Ira Schnapp)

my copy credits Curt Swan and George Klein; would guess Swan was the penciller

Schnapp is the letterer

A new “scholarly book” is coming: https://www.fantagraphics.com/products/reading-love-and-rockets

Also coming, and enormous: https://www.fantagraphics.com/products/love-and-rockets-the-sketchbooks

time to pick up the above, or the First Fifty, or hundreds of other books for sorta-half-price

^ eight hours left

I did not know (or forgot?) that Jaime drew Shrinking Violet & Phantom Girl for DC's Who's Who in the mid-'80s (as seen at the end of this piece) – very cool!:

https://www.cbr.com/jaime-hernandez-dc-superheroes-1980s/

Meanwhile, though – if that article (which I found while searching for those images) is correct that this Maggie "pin-up" was the actual inspiration for Carrie Kelley, DKR's Robin... that is **VERY** F-N' COOL(!!):

https://static1.cbrimages.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/jaime-hernandez-maggie-as-robin.jpg?q=50&fit=crop&w=750&dpr=1.5

I remember that sketch! <3

You can be reminded of it again tomorrow!

pretty sure I have it, I have the two sketchbook volumes?

(There is a LOT more in the new one, and most of it from improved sources, including Jaime’s original sketchbooks)

https://www.fantagraphics.com/products/love-rockets-vol-iv-16
weird ass cover

that *is* a weird ass cover

it was such a pleasure reading through one of the big editions recently, that going back to the smaller-sized collections feels like real stepdown

https://www.kexp.org/read/2021/8/13/throwing-muses-limbo-turns-25-kristin-hersh-gilbert-hernandez-album-artwork-and-more/

I'm intrigued by her comment about reading underground comics in Boston. I spent a ton of time in local comic stores, mostly in Cambridge, right around this same period, which directly led to my becoming a lifelong fan of Love & Rockets. The stores I liked really pushed underground comics right up front, and it makes me wonder if the prominence of shops like that gave many more local kids similar experiences.

she talks a lot about comics in her (great) autobio Rat Girl

I think it took me until early 1987 to discover L&R but the impact on myself and my circle of friends was immense

I’m trying to remember when I started reading L&R - might’ve been late high school, ‘93/‘94? But I feel like Eightball was first - stumbling on an issue at Geppi’s Comic World in Harbor Place in Baltimore and being all “what is this?” at the point in time when Marvel and DC were losing steam for me.

I like the new collection... physically, it's beautiful, the paper is really nice and all that (the dimensions are even a little larger than the last few).

I haven't read the Vol. IV issues, so all the material is new to me. I only remember the basics of what happened in the last few volumes, but it wasn't hard to get the gist. There's a "Tonta" story in the middle of the book – involving a comic convention followed by a family dinner – that has the rhythm & snap of classic Jaime... every panel is delightful. The rest of the book is more loose & laid-back, and gets a little fragmentary toward the end (the stories are so brief), but it has a through-line and the story is satisfying.

Jaime's dialogue doesn't feel quite as strong to me as in his prime, and his lettering gets blotchy in spots (maybe it's just his pen?). It's wild how the book covers ten years of material, but not a long stretch of story time... hard to know "when" it's taking place anymore, but I imagine there will be a time jump at some point. It's interesting how he's settled into this new set of characters... some of the intersections with the classic crew feel a little forced, but overall I think I like this era even better than the 2000s stuff.

I wasn’t crazy about the Ti-Girls storyline, but apart from that I’ve found it to be very consistent. I like Love Burglars a lot, and the most recent two books were pretty good, but not great. I’m mainly in it for Maggie.

I picked up the new one yesterday but haven’t really looked at it yet.

I haven’t kept up with Gilbert’s stuff at all. Once his storyline left Palomar I lost interest. Jaime’s art is so good that I can appreciate his stuff even if the story isn’t strong. Gilbert is a fine artist, but eventually I get hung up on the constant big breasts and it doesn’t seem like much is going on.