Love & Rockets - classic or dud

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?

that's because they came out last month

the titan books ones are for september. i dunno whether to order the american ones off the internet or to wait as i) an exercise in patience and ii) an exercise in anally making sure my copies have spines that match, sigh.

Based on Titan books past, I'd order the US books as they're bound to be prettier.

The Titan bks are identical to the Fantagraphics ones, apart from the company logo on the spine etc - these are just 'add ons' to the end of the print run, just like the Titan versions of DC GNs

I'm waiting for the Brit versions cos Waterstones discounted the first two volumes

Corrected standing.

is 'blood of palomar' the same as (the story) 'human diastrophism'? ("the process of deformation that produces continents and ocean basins in the earth's crust", word fans.)

i read the girl from hoppers and i'm halfway thro (the book) human diastrophism. i wuv these guys.

is 'blood of palomar' the same as (the story) 'human diastrophism'?

yes - contains three short stories totalling 9 pages, plus Human Diastrophism.

I took out the huge Locas and Palomar hardcovers from my local library eariler this year and completely adore the stories. Can anyone link me to a good guide to what stories appear in what trade and when? I realize a decent amount of material was cut from the hardcovers, and I want to start hunting down the remaining stuff, as well as the newer (post Vol. 1) stories. It's hard to figure out now where to go, even with that linked post way up there, I'm still confused... especially where L&R 1-50 end, collection-wise.

Basically, I want to go forward with both brothers' books after those collections, and maybe go back and find the missing material if I have enough time and/or money. It's possible I might be better off just buying those new softcover collections. Fantastic stuff, all in all, can't believe I never got to this stuff sooner, considering I was a Strangers in Paradise fan for so long.

So the short version:

JAIME: "Locas" = most of the Maggie & Hopey stories from L&R 1-50 (a few, particularly the ones that focus on other characters, are omitted). Go to "Whoa, Nellie!" (if you like the wrestling stuff), then "Locas in Love," then "Dicks and Deedees," then "Ghost of Hoppers."

GILBERT: "Palomar" = most of the specifically Palomar-set stories from L&R 1-50 (again, some omissions). While we're waiting for the third volume of the cheap Gilbert paperback reprints to come out, go to the old numbering system's vol. 10 ("Love & Rockets X"), then vol. 12 ("Poison River"), then "Luba in America," "Luba: The Book of Ofelia" and "Luba: Three Daughters."

Thanks so much for the help, Douglas! I know you actually already posted some of this up there, but I was *really* confused. I gotta start pinching those pennies, now.

I really appreciated those wrestling stories if Jaime's, actually... I always wonder why wrestling or sports comics never became a genre here, as they have in Japan. I found Rena Titañon's stories (as well as the other superhero stuff) pretty charming, the way they fit into that universe, even though Mechanics really is a very strange, semi-inappropriate introduction to the entire thing.

sooo when duz the american ed of the next lot of reprints come out? i dunno if i can hang on the additional however long it'll take for titan books to put their names on the spines, this time.

December, probably.

November/December, say Fanta.

That page I was always hoping for, a clear guide to what of the new and old trades to buy finally exists. In particular, "Love and Rockets X" and "Poison River" were reprinted in a third Gilbert volume, Beyond Palomar, and Amor Y Cohetes fills in the blanks.

All I need now is to know if they're going to reprint more of that post v1 stuff into new trades, like the Jaime stuff.

The tentative plan is to do a giant hardcover Locas II and giant hardcover Luba In America before they think about reformatting the later stuff into small books. Since they haven't even started collecting most of Beto's L&R v2 stuff into "old trades" yet, the "new trades" are probably a good many years off.

Amor Y Cohetes is the last book they are putting out in that format? thats fucked up.

hrm. complete vol 2 of l&r is $40 in floppies on the fantagraphics website => you're not going to get a better deal than that for it, however they collect it

I am sticking with the old format books, at least until I have bought all the ones my local shop is selling off cheap.

I like the smaller books, as I reckon that whole Palomar book would be intimidatingly big.

I reckon that you could do what I did and read Human Disastrophism/Blood of Palomar first, and then work backwords. The tragedy of Tonantzin almost works really well that way.

Do the characters from one brother ever appear in the other's stories? I saw Vincente and a woman (Pipo?) knocking around in a Jaime wrestling story, but beyond that they seem to like their own.

Nope, each brother does his own stuff--I think there are a couple of times when they've drawn their characters into the background of the other's as a goof, but that's about it.

I remember that ones in Eightball there was a story where Dan Clowes drew a one or two page strip featuring the characters from Hate ( Eighball-style, both in terms of art and storyline)... I was hoping for something like that from the Hernandez brothers.

but it was not to be.

Because I'm slow at these things, I haven't read the Gilbert stuff yet. If I read the nice new reprints (Heartbreak Soup to Beyond Palomar), will I be missing anything significant out, "Flies on the Ceiling"-style?

And just to baby feed me even more: does Gilbert's run have the same problem as Jaime's? (i.e. takes about three hundred pages to really start cooking).

The nice new reprints of Gilbert's stuff start at the moment he went supernova, so no worries there. (The earlier, messier stuff shows up in "Amor y Cohetes."