Love & Rockets - classic or dud

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.

I only got into this last year after reading some of Tom's old books. I found that I preferred Beto's stuff straight away but only this year did I get round to buying the collected paperback Palomar stuff (Heartbreak Soup and Human Diastrophism - a third one is out much later this year featuring Poison River, annoyingly left out of the second volume causing some confusion when readint the final section of that book, and Love And Rockets X tho i don't think i want to wait that long).

So I'm a little obsessed with the Palomar saga at the mo and am disappointed that I can't find any decent analysis or heavy discussion of it online tho I will look harder. I'd love to see a proper timeline of events as much as anything else. A lot of things at the end of Luba Conquers The World/Farewell Palomar/Chelo's Burden (confused by this being final chapter title as it was the title of L&R issue 3 Palomar story also?), particularly why Guadalupe hated Jesus so much.

So I have to read Poison River and then the post-Palomar Luba stuff. Is the Luba's Comics & Stories series good too?

The scene where (kinda spoilerish) Khamo finds Chancla

i didn't get why she looked so sheepish/embarassed as opposed to like completely hysterical/fearful - super creepy tho

i read g hernandez's 'sloth' last night. i'm not sure i have anything to say about it.

Luba's Comics & Stories series good too?

Peculiar - it's kinda Gilbert at his most rarefied and self-indulgent, in my opinion. There are any number of fantastic moments throughout (I've caught up with these via the LUBA trades), though Beto doesn't play anything remotely resembling catch-up with the reader (i.e. Be sure to know your Palomar history).

i didn't get why she looked so sheepish/embarassed as opposed to like completely hysterical/fearful - super creepy tho

That really resonated with me - it didn't follow logically yet felt completely right. I feel it's a massive gamble on Beto's part that payed off enormously.

Peculiar - it's kinda Gilbert at his most rarefied and self-indulgent, in my opinion.

SELF-CORRECTION: See GRIP. But the LUBA books don't fit the "user-friendly" tag, either.

I think looking at this comic now, the context of how different it was to pretty much everything else at the time might be lost. It's popularity really opened the doors for a lot of different things.

The early Mechanics stories were real cool. Later on the Palomar stuff became the best part of the book.

The early Mr. X comics that the Hernandez brothers did were really good. They got ripped off by the publisher and left.

The Palomar reissues have left me slackjawed at how good they are. Yay to Fantagraphix at making this cheaply available again.

They got ripped off by the publisher and left.

They later allowed that they didn't really get ripped off, just treated the way that most cartoonists do when dealing with undercapitalised companies running at the edge of their cashflow - it was just that that had never happened to them before.

That last issue of New Tales from Old Palomar was weird.

Not mind-blowing weird, just kind of odd and not that good?

That last issue of New Tales from Old Palomar was weird.

SEE: That story where Bruno Goya had his eye ripped out by a bird. "A Trick Of The Unconscious", I think.

was that story ever followed up? some sort of goverment experiment?

was that story ever followed up? some sort of goverment experiment?

SEEEEEEEEE: That story where Gato, Pintor, and someone else (I forget) get a glimpse of the future - NEW TALES IN OLD PALOMAR #2, I thiiiiiiiink.

Oh I see, I'll have to try and find that old storyline (collected somewhere in Palomar I assume??).

(collected somewhere in Palomar I assume??).

Yup - 's a grand little tale that's basically a Casamira solo (she also gets hints of her own end).

I bought a friend of mine Heartbreak Soup recently; I figure it's a good way to be remembered for life.

read the two new(ish) collections the past couple days. most of the locas stuff i'd read before, most of the palomar stuff i hadn't, or had forgotten.

palomar's chronology seems seriously whacked. it seems like tonantzin's introduction ought to show up a lot earlier, for example. i kind of got the feeling that g.h. had invented a lot of events we see in flashback - israel's dead sister, or luba's seduction of heraclio - a long time after the stories in which they are set, so he could rewrite everyone's motivations.

which is of course very very superhero-comic.

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.