Hernandez, Los Bros

A wonderfully huge link collection at Zompist (never heard of it, but that’s a whole bunch of links)

Love and Rockets Volume 1: Music for Mechanics

Kind of a mish-mash of early stuff. Essential reading once you’ve gone through the series, but if you haven’t read any of this the perfect place to get started is:

Love and Rockets Volume 2: Chelo’s Burden

Heartbreak Soup remains one of my favorite stories of all time.

Love and Rockets Volume 3: Las Mujeres Perdidas

These will all get reviewed sooner or later, but until then, here’s what “funny as a barrel of monkeys” means, from A Hog on Ice and Other Curious Expressions: One monkey arouses a great deal of amusement. Two more then double the interest and amusement. If one were to release a barrelful of monkeys, we must suppose that their antics would become hilariously comical. The expression is common among children.

Love and Rockets Volume 4: Tears From Heaven

This volume features the “Stigmata” story as well as all the goodness you’ve come to know and love.

Love and Rockets Volume 5: House of Raging Women

Best title of any volume of anything ever.

Love and Rockets Volume 6: Duck Feet

All Gilbert, so it’s all about Palomar. If you put a gun to my head I would have to pick Gilbert over Jaime, but not by much.

Love and Rockets Volume 7: Death of Speedy

That being said, this one is all Jaime and might be the best single volume in the bunch.

Love and Rockets Volume 8: Blood of Palomar

If you’ve read any of the volumes yet, you know who Tontazin is. Gilbert once said that he loved her more than any of his other characters, and this volume shows her search for meaning in the world. OK, maybe this one is the best of the bunch.

Love and Rockets Volume 9: Flies on the Ceiling

Both of the Bros are present again in this volume and this deals with a lot of the “supporting” characters, further fleshing out the whole world of both authors.

Love and Rockets Volume 10: X

More Gilbert, this time set in L.A.

Love and Rockets Volume 11: Wigwam Bam

The breakup of Maggie and Hopey?

Love and Rockets Volume 12: Poison River

How did Luba become who she is today, and why isn’t she safe wherever she goes?

Love and Rockets Volume 13: Chester Square

All Jaime and this one is mostly about Maggie and how she’s dealing with everything that’s happened to her.

Love and Rockets Volume 14: Luba Conquers the World

All Gilbert. The last full volume dealing with Palomar.

Love and Rockets Volume 15: Hernandez Satyricon

Random things that were left over from the series that didn’t fit into any of the other books. Like Volume 1, not really necessary until you’ve gotten to love the rest of the series.

Love and Rockets Sketchbook Volume 1

Love and Rockets Sketchbook Volume 2

Birdland – Gilbert Hernandez

������� This one is from Eros and boy is it ever adults only.� One of the very few graphic novels that Eros put out that actually had a plot and a landmark for pornographic comics.� Well, it would have been a landmark if anybody ever tried to put a plot in one the damned things again…��

Luba In America

Collects the first part of the Luba series, one of the best series coming out in the last few years. Is it true that people don’t really buy the spin-off series and that’s why they had to start back up again with Love and Rockets? Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad they did, but they shouldn’t have been forced to just because of a name. Their projects since then have been just as good (if not better) than the rest of their stuff.

Fear of Comics – Gilbert Hernandez

Kind of a random assortment of stuff Gilbert has done since L & R wrapped up.

Girl Crazy – Gilbert Hernandez

Dark Horse published this book of his work, which for some unfathomable reason I still haven’t seen.

Whoa, Nellie! – Jaime Hernandez

All wrestling and you can just tell that he grew up on the stuff.

Locas in Love – Jaime Hernandez

All done after L & R was finished and all well worth reading.

Love and Rockets #8

OK, I’ll be honest: I’ve been avoiding reviewing individual issues of Love and Rockets. I know, it’s not like I’ve done that great of a job with the graphic novels either, but the individual issues have always seemed like (to me, anyway) brief chapter installments with not much going for them individually. Not sure exactly where that opinion came from, because I decided to examine this one from a “critic’s” perspective, and there’s all sorts of things in each issue that tend to get overlooked when the reprints come around. There’s a short tale about an aging woman who’s extremely dissatisfied with her life… except it’s really about the attempted murder of a stuntman. There’s also a short about a young woman who’s afraid of the world because she keeps seeing a laughing dog; that’s a loaded two pages. Then of course you have the main stories: Maggie by Jamie and Fritz by Gilbert. Those aren’t the titles of the stories, but for anybody who’s read these guys for the past 10-20 years (and if you’re reading this page, not to mention this site at all, that probably includes you), that’s all you need to know about the stories. Sure, Fritz has great big boobs, and it would be easy to leave it at that. But there’s so much more to what Gilbert does than that. He makes a real human being behind those boobs, same as he did with Luba years ago. I don’t think anybody in comics has a handle on real people the way Gilbert does, except for maybe Jamie. All I have to say about his story: poor Maggie. These issues beg to be read in chunks, sure, but as the Hernandez Bros. are the best people in comics at keeping a schedule, even if you read them when they come out you probably still have a good idea in your head of what happened in the last issue. This series remains required reading for anybody who likes comics.