Love and Rockets and More: The Collected Hernandez Bros. by Fantagraphics

by Los. Bros. Hernandez The latest issue of Love & Rockets reintroduces one of Gilbert's wackiest characters... Roy! This cover-featured tale is the mother of all Roy epics, as he is wrongfully imprisoned and then caught in a hellish jailbreak. Plus Julio's dad lays it down in this issue's installment of "Julio's Day"; Dr. Fausto explores the mysterious case of "Rosario X"; beloved Danish comedian Dirk Passer stars in a classic "Peterson" adventure; and a new chapter of the Beto/Mario adventure epic, "Me For the Unknown." Over on the Jaime side of the fence, after last issue's Penny Century extravaganza, Maggie, Hopey, and Ray are back for three new stories! Deluxe paper, cardstock covers. MATURE READERS b&w, 32pg

Gilbert Hernandez has taken this suite of stories (including the 48-page graphic novelette “High Soft Lisp”), originally serialized in the second volume of Love and Rockets, and fleshed them out with a dozen brand new pages, creating an original and inventive (and very steamy) volume that, through its connections to his main character Luba (Fritz is Luba’s half sister, and characters from the Luba stories pop up here), works both as a standalone graphic novel and a further exploration of Hernandez’s rich world.

A deep dive into the first 50 issues of the Hernandez Brothers' acclaimed comic series, this scholarly book seeks to answer the question: What makes Love and Rockets such an enduring classic of the medium?

This comics omnibus includes the graphic novels Julio's Day and The Children of Palomar, as well as never-before-collected work by brothers Mario and Gilbert Hernandez, some of which has never been available since its early 2000s run in comic book single issues.

A standalone graphic novel that shines a light on the family tree of one of Hernandez's most memorable characters of the past several years, the teenager Tonta.

by the Hernandez Brothers Hopey goes on a picnic, to a rock 'n' roll show, and the bathroom in "Saturday is Shatter Day," the latest installment of "Day by Day with Hopey." And on the Beto side of the book, "On a Gut Level" features the return on Palomar's original heartbreaker, Pipo, trapped in a mysterious castle with Fritz, her ex Mark Hererra, and his wife Mila... plus another Kid Stuff Kids"! Viva los bros!

The "director's cut" edition of the sprawling super-hero epic from Love and Rockets. Originally serialized in Love and Rockets New Stories, “Ti-Girls Adventures” managed to be both a rollickingly creative super-hero joyride (featuring three separate super-teams and over two dozen characters) that ranged from the other side of the universe to Maggie’s shabby apartment, and a genuinely dramatic fable about madness, grief, and motherhood as Penny Century’s decades-long quest to become a genuine super-heroine are finally, and tragically, fulfilled. In addition to introducing a plethora of wild new characters, God and Science brings in many older characters from Jaime’s universe, some from seemingly throwaway shorter strips and some from Maggie’s day-to-day world (including some real surprises). The main heroine of the story, forming a bridge between the “realistic” Maggie stories and the super-heroic extravaganza is “Angel,” Maggie’s sweet-tempered and athletic new roommate and best friend, and now herself an aspiring super-heroine.

In Ofelia, the sisters, the kids, and the cousins are all settled comfortably in California after leaving Palomar in Luba and Her Family. Luba and her cousin Ofelia’s relationship has always been fraught, but when Ofelia threatens to write a book about Luba, past memories, secrets, resentments, and pain resurface. Meanwhile, Luba’s children―genius Socorro, recently out-and-proud Doralis, and prickly Maricela―show that a talent for trouble may be hereditary. Luba’s sisters, Fritz and Petra, swap lovers (as usual), but . . . are Fritz and family friend Pipo sittin’ in a tree? These vividly drawn characters are charged with Hernandez’s trademark complexity; they live, love, age, fight― and die―in this sweeping, multi-generational saga.

A fourth volume of Jaime's "Locas" stories includes "Whoa, Nellie!," in which Maggie is introduced to the world of pro-wrestling, and "Bay of Threes," in which the full back story of Maggie's bombshell friend Beatriz "Penny Century" Garcia is revealed.

The suppression of family history is the initial thread that ties together The Love Bunglers, featuring Hernandez's longtime Love and Rockets heroine Maggie. Because these secrets can't be dealt with openly, their lingering effect is even more powerful. But Maggie's ability to navigate and find meaning in her life - despite losing her culture, her brother, her profession, and her friends - is what's made her a compelling character. After a lifetime of losses, Maggie finds, in the second half, her longtime off and on lover, Ray Dominguez. Much like John Updike in his four Rabbitnovels, Jaime Hernandez has been following his longtime character Maggie around for several decades, all of which has seemed to be building towards this book in particular.

by Los Bros. Hernandez "Generations" might be the subtitle for this especially lively, eclectic, and time-spanning issue of Love and Rockets, timed to premiere on the title's 20th anniversary. In the lead story that flashes back way before even the original Love and Rockets #1, a seven-year-old Penny Century is introduced to a forty-something H.R. Costigan -- her husband to be many years later. Meanwhile, back in the present, Hopey spends quality time with her daddy, and Ray plays a game of "Over the Line" with some old Hoppers partners. Gilbert picks up the issue's theme and runs with it in the latest installment of "Julio's Day," as we find out some things about Julio's parents that will surprise us. Also, "The High Soft Lisp" centers around Fritz's punk days and her hopeless infatuation with Scott the Hog, the lead singer of the original Love and Rockets (from the Love and Rockets X graphic novel)...plus the latest ripping installment of the Mario/Beto south-of-the-border thriller "Me for the Unknown"! Three cartoonists, six stories, one modern classic! MATURE READERS b&w, 32pg

In the next chapter of the Palomar saga, actress Fritz contends with a sex cult, mad scientists, and her inner demons.

Maggie and Hopey leave their significant others at home and take a weekend road trip to go to a punk scene reunion in their old neighborhood. Threaded throughout are flashbacks to 1979, during the formative stages in their lifelong relationship, as the perceived invincibility of youth is juxtaposed against all of the love, heartbreak, and self-awareness that comes with lives actually lived. Serialized over the past four years in Love and Rockets: New Stories and the new comic book series, Is This How You See Me? collects Hernandez’s unsentimental, long-form masterpiece together for the first time.

This collects the stories from Vol. 3 of the Love and Rockets comic book, including the LA Times Book Prize-winning Love Bunglers, and much more. The sublime, the superpowered, and the senior citizen converge in Angels and Magpies, which collects the Gods and Science: Return of the Ti-Girls and Love Bunglers storylines from the Love and Rockets: New Stories series, as well as Hernandez’s 2006 serial for the New York Times. In the latter, Maggie pays a visit to Queen Rena, who is living out her twilight days on an island after a lifetime as a wrestler and an adventuress. In the Ti-Girls segment, superheroics get a screwball spin when Angel of Tarzana and Maggie square off against Dark Penny Century. In the "Love Bunglers," held as perhaps Hernandez’s greatest masterpiece in his thirty-five-year career, and one of the great graphic novels of all time (it was hailed by Slate and Publishers Weekly as one of the best stories of the year), the past and present converge as Maggie and Ray’s reunion is threatened by long-buried family secrets.

Gilbert Hernandez continues his metafictional realization of the film career of his troubled heroine Rosalba "Fritz" Martinez, who abandoned her psycho-therapy practice to become queen of Z-grade exploitation movies.

The first of three volumes chronicles the globe-trotting adventures and exploits of Maggie, her best friend and occasional lover Hopey, and their companions, Peggy Century, her weirdo mentor Izzy, aging wrestler Rena Titanon, and Maggie's new love interest, Rand Race. Original.

This double-feature collects two Gilbert Hernandez graphic novellas in one! In the Eisner Award-winning "Hypnotwist," a woman wanders through a series of increasingly surreal scenes, confronting motherhood, alcoholism, a sinister smiley face, and worse fates. Illustrated psychodrama as you like it! Meanwhile, in "Scarlet by Starlight": Imagine a B-movie cross between Star Trek and Heart of Darkness. When a primitive alien fauna becomes infatuated with its colonizer, a fragile ecosystem threatens to crumble under fear and violence.

This volume collects the adventures of the spunky Maggie; her annoying, pixie-ish best friend and sometime lover Hopey; and their circle of friends, including their bombshell friend Penny Century, Maggie's weirdo mentor Izzy―as well as the aging but still heroic wrestler Rena Titanon and Maggie's handsome love interest, Rand Race. After the sci-fi trappings of his earliest stories (as seen in Maggie the Mechanic, the first volume in this series), Hernandez refined his approach, settling on the more naturalistic environment of the fictional Los Angeles barrio, Hoppers, and the lives of the young Mexican-Americans and punk rockers who live there. A central story and one of Jaime's absolute peaks is "The Death of Speedy." Such is Jaime's mastery that even though the end of the story is telegraphed from the very title, the downhill spiral of Speedy, the local heartthrob, is utterly compelling and ultimately quite surprising. Also in this volume, Maggie begins her on-again off-again romance with Ray D., leading to friction and an eventual separation from Hopey.

To a very great extent, Love and Rockets is synonymous with Hoppers' Maggie & Hopey and Palomar's Luba & Carmen & Heraclio & Tonantzin... but there was always more to L and R than that. Amor y Cohetes finally collects together in one convenient package all the non-Maggie and non-Palomar stories by all three Hernandez Brothers from that classic first, 50-issue Love and Rockets series—a dizzying array of styles and approaches that re-confirms these groundbreaking cartoonists' place in the history of comics.

Gilbert Hernandez’s sprawling family saga focuses on the United States, where newly immigrated Luba and her sisters, body-builder Petra and therapist/film star Fritz, find their families’ and friends’ lives becoming more and more intertwined. As the three sisters have “memories of sweet youth,” the next generation finds the spotlight: Luba’s adult daughter Doralís emcees the proceedings in her role as mischievous host of a children’s TV show, while Petra’s little girl, Venus, has adventures with her aunt Fritz and her best friend Yoshio. At her mother’s urging, Venus also writes missives to her fierce, one-armed cousin Casimira, who’s back in Palomar. In these stories ― never before collected together ― Venus tells it like it is!

"Human Diastrophism" is the only full graphic novel length "Palomar" story ever created by Gilbert. In it, a serial killer stalks Palomar―but his depredations, hideous as they are, only serve to exacerbate the cracks in the idyllic Central American town as the modern world begins to intrude. "Diastrophism" concludes with the death (the suicide, in fact) of one of Palomar's most beloved characters, and a postscript that provides one of the most hauntingly magical moments of the entire series as a rain of ashes drifts down upon Palomar. Also included are all the post-"Diastrophism" stories, in which Luba's past (as seen in the epic Poison River) comes back to haunt her, and the seeds are sown for the "Palomar diaspora" that ends this dense, enthralling book.

"Heartbreak Soup shares the dreamlike sensuality of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s stories, their soft contrasts, their intoxicating images. Hernandez introduces the Central American town of Palomar in “Sopa de Gran Pena.” There are four main storylines running through “Sopa,” marking their own courses and occasionally bumping into each other like billiard balls. The first concerns the plight of Chelo, the town’s bath-giver, whose clientele is usurped by a newcomer to the town, Luba (Gilbert’s earth-mother character and the central figure in his Palomar stories), here having only but begun her prodigious career in child-bearing. Then there’s the story of Manuel, the town gigolo, and his amorous conquest of the 14-year-old Pipo; and there’s the arduous climb to manhood of the Palomar adolescents, a rite of passage that is marked by both the loss of virginity and the death of a comrade (although in Gilbert’s hands these mythic prerequisites have never seemed more commonplace and natural; after all, aren’t they the stuff of every boy’s life); and finally, there’s the redemption of the village clown Tipin’ Tipin’ by the unnaturally precocious Carmen (who is almost paranormal here she seems like and unusually sophisticated child, but in her subsequent appearances — as Heraclio’s wife — she’s like a quixotic dwarf; yet her physical appearance hasn’t changed at all, only the context in which she appears). The thrill of his work is in the sharpness of his observations. Each Palomarian is gifted with a set of unmistakably personal mannerisms, gestures, and styles of dress. Few comic books have given their character such distinctive facial features: it is impossible to confuse Heraclio with Satch, or either of them with Israel or Jesus. He also has an amazing demographic eye. He expertly evokes the drowsy sense of suffocation under which Palomar labors, the magical potency of names like “Disneyland” and “Sophia Loren” have when they filter through the temporal cloud that hangs over the town. He conveys a sense of place better than any other cartoonist in the medium. Palomar has an urgency that simply isn’t matched by any other comics landscape. It’s Gilbert Hernandez’s peculiar genius, his greatest strength. It’s his art." — Rob Rodi, The Comics Journal, on sleeve of 1987 Edition

by Los Bros Hernandez It's a special double-sized issue of Love and Rockets, celebrating the tenth issue of Volume 2! In the 20-page final chapter of Jaime's latest "Maggie" serial, a figure rises out of the ashes of Izzy's burned-down house, the demonic black dogs appear again, and Maggie is at the center of it all. On the 'Beto side of the fence, "Julio's Day" returns with the first of several longer chapters: Julio and his brother come home from working in the city and the rain stops, and a family tragedy changes the course of their lives. This issue also includes the ultimate "Roy" epic, as Roy is joined by all the various characters from recent L&R short stories in a JLA-type super-team on a mission to combat Roy's nemesis the Froat. Plus: "Whatever Happened to...?" one-pager for many of the older L&R characters - and the conclusion of the Beto/Mario thriller "Me for the Unknown!" MATURE READERS b&w, 56pg

Five women stand in a police lineup; four of them are garishly dressed, impressively endowed superwomen ― perfectly normal, because this is, after all, the cover of a comic book. A closer look, however, reveals a fifth woman who seems thoroughly out of place ― mousy, in bathrobe and curlers, smoking a cigarette, she appears to have been suddenly yanked from her breakfast table. Surely, this diminutive, dowdy woman is here by mistake ― or is she? From the very first cover of the very first issue of Love and Rockets in 1982, Gilbert and Jaime Hernandez have created artwork that has subverted, contradicted and celebrated the history of the comic book medium, inverting familiar tropes and creating some of the most iconic images in comics over the past three and a half decades, inviting fans and readers into their world. Amazingly, many of the covers created by Gilbert and Jaime Hernandez for the various iterations of Love and Rockets over the past 35 years have never been collected or have only been reprinted in black-and-white. Love and Rockets: The Covers will not only rectify this problem, but present them without trade dress (logos, marketing hype, etc.), allowing the original cover illustrations to communicate on their own.

Comics Dementia collects unexpected treasures, oddities, and rarities from outposts of the Love and Rockets galaxy, by one of Earth's greatest living cartoonists, Gilbert Hernandez. Saints, sinners, and the Candide-like Roy mingle in jungles, in fables, in outer space: in cocktail lounges and living rooms. Ditko meets Melville meets Bob Hope―but the party really starts bumping when the Alfred E. Neuman of the L&R-verse, Errata Stigmata, makes her entrance. Many of these stories haven’t been available since their original appearance in comic shops in the 1990s.

There are mythical creatures and alien abductions in this omnibus, but, as always, the greatest unknown for Gilbert Hernandez's characters is what lies in their own hearts. In Three Sisters, which collects the graphic novels Luba: Three Daughters, High Soft Lisp, and more, the children are growing up and lovers have come and gone (and come and gone again) as Luba, Petra, and Fritz move on to the next phases of their lives and careers.

In this batch of “Locas” stories by Jaime Hernandez from the pages of Love and Rockets Volume II (picking up where 2010’s Penny Century collection left off), an older and wiser Maggie faces down her old demons and the “Ghost of Hoppers” in a full-length graphic novel (which also introduces one of Jaime’s greatest recent characters, Vivian the “Frogmouth,” the near-psychotic bombshell). Meanwhile, the ever-feisty but maturing Hopey (her Spanish birth name giving this collection its title) transitions from tending bar to teaching kindergarten (while still juggling a complex love life), and the final quarter of the book shows Maggie’s lovable ex Ray Dominguez being dragged into the aftermath of a grisly murder thanks to his falling for the Frogmouth.

Two classic Gilbert Hernandez Love and Rockets graphic novels in one beautiful volume: "Poison River" traces the backstory of Luba, from child to teenage mob bride to her escape to Palomar; "Love and Rockets X" is a wide-ranging, Altman-esque story set in early-1990s L.A.

Love & Rockets Vol. 2 #1