Gilbert Hernandez is a master of dialogue, of interwoven storylines, of ever-changing time. but it's always clear. every character, however minor, is distinct, and has a story. the Palomar saga here opens up into a larger verse, before and after Palomar, before Luba, and later as her children migrate to Los Angeles. but Palomar remains, at first undiscovered, then half-hidden in the midst of war (a promised land), then reimagined by the third generation as the treasured home, an unchanging source of family and strength - and Heartbreak Soup. it's almost impossible to overstate how good this book (Book 3 of the Palomar tales - and they should be read in order, even though Gilbert's storytelling skips back and forth in time and in perspective) really is. the author is in total control of every bit of both art and story, and it slides seamlessly between the family saga and magic realism models. when the narrative moves between locales or segments of time, there's no jolt: every character remains recognizable at any age, and the particular moment in time, although unstated, is easy to pinpoint through the story. this book has three centers: the story centered on Luba's elusive mother Maria (Poison River), the story centered on Luba's first marriage at fifteen to the gangster Peter Rios, and the story called Love and Rockets X set in modern Los Angeles. at first the last part seems only marginally connected to the Palomar stories: it's basically Gilbert's revenge on the 80s band Love and Rockets for claiming the name of the Hernandez Brothers' comics anthologies as their own. and it's very funny as it skewers both the band(s), that unique teenage period of sexual and identity confusion, and all the different cultures of Los Angeles especially at points of contact. but every new character is beautifully rendered, gradually Luba's children enter into it, people go back to and leave Palomar, and the whole thing just gets richer as it goes, a lovely thing and a fine example of both Gilbert's technique and his mastery of both craft and art. the Palomar stories are a kind of One Hundred Years of Solitude that should be classic reading, not just in the medium of graphic novels but as novels themselves, told like a Latin DreamTime path, continually evolving as the master storyteller switches in time and in timelessness his narrative boundaries. it's gritty on the subject of war, and politics, drug cultures, adolescence, and even here transsexual strip clubs. it often changes the established narrative by retelling an incident from the perspective of a different eyewitness. it makes allusions that move the reader backwards and forwards in time and space to see and to question the origin story of everything. and it's so beautifully executed that it seems seamless; the reader never loses her place, and the author never slips from being in total control of his story, and of his enormous cast of characters. it's a modern masterpiece. ( )

I just cannot get into Luba's story or town. ( )

I'm reading the collections since I never read them when the comics were originally released. My husband is a big fan and it's funny how he still remembers storylines and characters even after all of these years. ( )

While not nearly as essential as the preceding two volumes of Gilbert Hernandez's collected stories from Love and Rockets, Beyond Palomar is still an interesting and worthwhile read. The first story, "Poison River", delves deeply into the background of Luba, one of Beto's long-time central characters. The story is decent, but removed as it is from the familiar community of Palomar, it somehow lacks the deeper connections that are one of the strongest characteristics of Beto's complicated narrative threads.

The second story, "Love and Rockets X", is something else altogether, a frenetic ride through a rather confused California landscape. Connections to Palomar exist in this story as well, but the intent of the story keeps it headed in another direction, a direction that feels a bit muddled overall. It's not without certain moment-by-moment rewards, but the story feels forced, and many of the characters are a little too wooden and cliched to come alive with the rich personalities that Beto is capable of defining. ( )