Complete Love

My birthday was last week, and the wife, who puts up with my comic book hobby like the trouper she is, got for me Jamie Hernandez's Locas and Gilbert Hernandez's Palomar, two massive books that collect all of the Love and Rockets stories by the brothers (missing are those by the third Hernandez, Mario, who didn't do much with the comic after the first couple of issues and a recent multi-part story in Love and Rockets volume 2).

I mentioned earlier that the modern independant comic is the closest current type of publication to romance comics of old, and of all those that are being published now or in the recent past, the Hernandez brothers' work is by far the best.

In the mid-80s, I was working at a comic book store in Bethlehem, PA (Dreamscape Comics -- it's still there) and buying nearly everything I could get my hands on. It was the beginning of the black-and-white boom and new series and publishers were popping up daily. Of course, the number compared with today is miniscule, but at the time, it was a very exciting thing. First, Comico, Capitol (briefly), Mirage, Dark Horse, etc., were putting out new and different material, much of which was mediocre, but some which was outstanding (Concrete, Grendel, Nexus, to name a few).

Fantagraphics had been around for a while, primarily as the publisher of The Comics Journal, the still-running comic criticism magazine, but they had recently started to release more comics of their own. I loved Jan Strnad and Dennis Fujitake's Dalgoda, Peter Bagge's Neat Stuff, and at a time when comic strip reprints were at their peak, they published nice volumes of Hal Foster's Prince Valiant and Walt Kelly's Pogo.

I was able to get my older sister to read a few comics as well, most notably Elfquest, and when she stopped in the store one day with her friends, she bought an issue of Love and Rockets (most likely in the early teens). I had tried to read it previously, but most of the stories seemed to be about girls -- tough girls, whether they were Maggie and Hopey living in Los Angeles or Luba and her family living in Mexico -- and I just didn't see the appeal in them. A year or so later, I went back and read the first few issues (reprinted in Love and Rockets Vol. 1), and I was hooked. Maybe it was that I was older; maybe it was because I just was stupid and didn't "get it" the first time. Whatever the reason, I got it now.

Initially, I favored Jamie's stories. They were much more... real. They dealt with people who I think I may one day meet; kids who liked punk music, drank too much, screwed around. (I was much too afraid to do any of these things, but I wanted to know the people who did.) It took me a while longer to get into Gilbert's, which at first read were more complicated, more morose, more about being an adult.

I like them equally now, albeit for different reasons. Maggie and Hopey (and their friends) have grown up with me. They age (not as fast, it seems, as I am), and their lives have changed. They're no longer best friends, and their relationship has had its ups (and way ups) and downs (and way downs). Nearly all of the stories are about love -- unrequited, messed-up, complicated love. And, like the romance comics of old, there usually is some kind of message to be gleaned, an "I-told-you-so" moment much more subtle than in True War Romance.

Palomar focuses on Luba, a gigantic breasted Mexican woman, her husband (scarred in a fire), her children, her village, her past. It's profoundly sad at times, and uplifting at others, and the complex weaving of various times, places, and characters make for a compelling read.

This is the true evolution of the romance comic. From 8-page story. To the subplot of a super-hero's life. To 8-page underground comix story. To Love and Rockets. (Note, there are some pretty huge jumps between these, but take my word for it.)

If you haven't read these stories before, do so. If you already have, buy these books and read them again.

They're worth it.