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.

kind of got the feeling that g.h. had invented a lot of events we see in flashback - israel's dead sister

That's in "Chelo's Burden", the very first story! I'm serious - look in PALOMAR and see! Girl missing teeth looking directly at viewer, w/ Israel in the back. Dude!

shit, you're right! it doesn't get mentioned in the next two-fifty pages, though.

the page before the one with the dead sister has jesus in prison, too.

oh well. i was starting to like my theory of hernandez as an inveterate retconner.

my theory of hernandez as an inveterate retconner.

Don't completely dismiss it - he clearly intends Gato, when he first introduces him, to be at least in his thirties, yet (if you go by NEW TALES/OLD PALOMAR #2) he's supposedly a teen, I think. He does something similar with Borro, the pre-Chelo sherrif - he goes from incompetent corrupt drunk (in HEARTBREAK SOUP) to a morally ambiguous, somewhat suave, and cunning detective (in ECCE HOMO/HUMAN DIASTROPHISM).

so, wait, amazon.co.uk lists the second volumes of the new reprints as already out? eh?

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

― Robert Adam Gilmour, Wednesday, September 4, 2024

It is the first issue published since the passing of Gilbert and Jaime's mother, Aurora Hernandez (this issue's cover artist, in case you were wondering).

Gilbert's daughter Natalia is on the new Roy book, so I wonder if it'll not be the Hernandez Bros anymore but the Hernandez Family

Natalia has been publishing her own minicomics for at least a decade

Oh man, seeing Jaime going through his thought process filling out panels, what a cool thing. Interviewer really gets him to walk through technique that's been deployed instinctively for years, and Jaime even retraces his steps of who influenced him and how he developed that process. Great insights.

Fantagraphics is doing 40% off orders >$75 today

Ugh, I probably didn't need to order the big box but I did.

Does anybody keep up with Gilbert's stuff? I read all of the TP's and by the end of those I was done and it felt like it was in a rut of huge breasted women rutting.

I got the sketchbooks, Reading Love and Rockets, and Queen of the Ring. I considered the big box because $240 is a great deal for it, but have to wait until next time.

Latesploitation: An examination of recent works by Gilbert Hernandez

How do we read Gilbert Hernandez? The question gets harder, not easier, the more Hernandez adds to his body of work, including such recent releases as Lovers and Haters, the debut issue of Roy (with daughter Natalia), and, from a few years prior, books such as Proof That the Devil Loves You and the collected Blubber.

If every ilxor who wished they could get the big box had bought it already, Fanta would have been able to do the expanded paperback version and The Second Sixty box

There are things I liked about the Palomar era, but I don't miss it. I miss his drawings from around the late 90s up to maybe 2010? It looks more physically solid, moody and nuanced to me.
I think the change in style was due to the necessity of producing more work but I've seen some comments by him that suggest he prefers his looser drawn approach.

Blubber was a disappointment for me, really liked the idea of it but I didn't enjoy it much. I was very amused by how horrified some people were, probably by the part of it that I thought was funniest (Shitter).

I didn't know what to make of the repetition of "the artist has lost all credibility", for me this acknowledgment of potential backlash spoiled the fun a bit. I don't know if it's a defensive thing or just a general commitment to putting anything that crosses his mind on the page.

https://4columns.org/sinker-mark/locas-the-maggie-and-hopey-stories

mark u said “jaime’s half” on bsky but this is only one-eighth, plz post when you have updated

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/5NoP_VrnmCQ/maxresdefault.jpg