*Starred Review* On the heels of the massive compilation of his brother Gilbert's stories of Palomar [BKL O 1 03], Jaime, the other half of the Love and Rockets team, collects 15 years of his comics about a group of young woman in the L.A. barrio into an equally impressive, 700-page saga. The series centers on the stormy but enduring relationship between the charmingly insecure Maggie and her abrasive soul mate, Hopey, but is roomy enough for a huge cast of vivid supporting characters. Beginning as a soap opera set against a backdrop of rocket ships and dinosaurs, Maggie and Hopey's adventures swiftly morphed into a sprawling, humanistic epic based in the Southern California punk-rock scene and encompassing street gangs, strip clubs, and women's wrestling. Maggie, Hopey, and the rest of the cast developed rapidly, as did Jaime's drawing skills, quickly becoming some of the most engaging characters and most elegantly expressive artwork in all of comics. As the cast aged, it became clear that the series' most poignant themes were the passage of time, squandered youth, and missed opportunities. Back in the 1980s, Love and Rockets was the coolest comic around; as this essential volume attests, Jaime's opus is much more than cool--it's classic. Gordon Flagg
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Review
"The release of the year... one that stretches across decades, like the great domestic mysteries that have sustained literary culture for millennia."
― Salon.com
"At once intimate and epic... one of the great milestones in comics history."
― Bookslut
"Starred Review. Finally collected into one volume, these stories are among the greatest comics ever put to paper, and an essential piece of the literature of the punk movement."
― Publishers Weekly
"A fluid, multifaceted portrait that at times feels more like a film than a graphic novel."
― Whitney Matheson, USA Today
"A high point in the comics form, conventional in idiom, but not comparable to any strips before it."
― The Washington Post
"The world that Jaime Hernandez created is so believable, so fluent, so filled with minor trivialities, arguments, passion and stories it sometimes feels more real that the world outside. To call it a classic comic is to underestimate its impact and importance―this is classic art."
― Everett True, Plan B
"A perfect introduction to the Love and Rockets universe for newcomers and an awesome addition for longtime fans looking to beef up their collection."
― Kate Izquidero
About the Author
Jaime Hernandez was one of six siblings born and raised in Oxnard, California. His mother passed down a love of comics, which for Jaime became a passion rivaled only by his interest in the burgeoning punk rock scene of 1970s Southern California. Together with his brothers Gilbert and Mario, Jaime co-created the ongoing comic book series Love and Rockets in 1981, which Gilbert and Jaime continue to both write and draw to this day. Jaime’s work began as a perfect (if unlikely) synthesis of the anarchistic, do-it-yourself aesthetic of the punk scene and an elegant cartooning style that recalled masters such as Charles M. Schulz and Alex Toth. Love and Rockets has evolved into one of the great bodies of American literary fiction, spanning five decades and countless high-water marks in the medium’s history. In 2016, Hernandez won the prestigious Los Angeles Times Book Prize for his graphic novel, The Love Bunglers. In 2017, he (along with Gilbert) was inducted into the Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame, and, in 2018, he released his first children’s book, the Aesop Book Prize-winning The Dragon Slayer: Folktales from Latin America. He is a lifelong Angeleno.
