Jaime Hernandez

I am embarrassed to admit just HOW LONG this has been on my shelves unread. I did really want to read it! I love Maggie & Hopey! But as convenient as it was to have all these stories together in one place, it did NOT make for the most convenient format to read. Eight million pages and seven hundred pounds, this book. Not a book to slip in your purse or read in bed, or even very comfortably hold in your lap.

BUT, the Sapphic September challenge finally gave me the much needed push to get this show more book out and I am SO GLAD that I did. In fact, my only criticism of this book is that there wasn't MORE!?

For the uninitiated, Maggie & Hopey are recurring characters created by Jaime Hernandez in the Hernandez brothers' long running comic series Love and Rockets. They are bisexual Mexican-American women in Southern California who become friends, sometimes lovers, but always present in each other's tumultuous lives. Their storylines start out larger than life, with Maggie a rocket mechanic and also dinosaurs? The storylines get more human-sized before long (though they never abandon this backstory). The scale of that life is still pretty large, with punk bands on tour and professional wrestling and Penny puttering around in mansions, but the heart of the story is always these two girls, and how they keep finding each other even as their lives seem to keep pulling them apart.

I love them so much. show less

For the uninitiated, Locas collects the Maggie & Hopey stories from Love & Rockets. Well, the subtitle says Maggie, Hopey, & Ray, but frankly I could do with a lot less of Ray (even if the Ray stories get me a lot more of Vivian, who I also love). I was so delighted to get a copy of Locas II, which finally catches up to where I had started reading Love & Rockets during my all too brief single-issue comics-buying days.

I love these queer aging Mexican American girls, both the realistic bits & show more the surreal ghosts & the incredible shrinking Izzy bits. I love the weaving story- and time-lines, the tiny little micro stories that take place on a single page, but then tie into larger storylines much later. I love their messy relationships & self doubt.

I also love that I saved this for a readathon, it was great to snuggle up with this monster of a book and catch up with old friends. show less

Well, this one certainly packed an emotional punch.

Jaime concludes his The Love Bunglers storyline with some powerful writing and drawing. Maggie's life sort of comes full circle and with Jaime filling in gaps in her life story through flashback stories over the last few editions, there's a real sense of closure. I've been reading about Maggie and Hopey and the rest for the last 25 years or so, in various iterations of Love and Rockets, so to see this character finally get a happy ending was show more quite moving. I hope Jaime hasn't finished with Maggie. Besides, we haven't found out what's happening with Hopey yet!

For me this edition is all about Jaime's stories. Gilbert's stories left me a bit cold. Has he got another Human Diastrophism or Poison River in him? I dunno. I'm not warming to Killer.

So the five stars are all Jaime's. show less

I've actually read all these stories before, spread out over nearly ten years across fourteen issues of the (ir)regular Love and Rockets series. Frankly, these tiny vignettes didn't make much sense then, but Jaime Hernandez's art is just irresistible, so I kept following along.

But now, gathered under one cover and read in just a couple hours, it all finally makes sense.

Maggie Chascarillo and Hopey Glass are present for the sake of longtime readers, but the majority of the book puts the show more spotlight on Anoush "Tonta" Agajanian, the younger sister of series regular femme fatale Vivian Solis.

Tonta -- a nickname meaning stupid, silly, or foolish in Spanish -- is a stupid, silly and foolish teenager bumbling through life in the summer after high school graduation. She's shunted around the family, living with her older sisters who treat her poorly physically and emotionally.

One of her great pleasures is attending an art class taught be Ray Dominguez, but Tonta manages to mess that up for herself too, but it does bring her life into closer contact with Maggie and puts her on the road to better days.

Hernandez makes it all a little goofy and a little sad, a little humorous and a little tragic. He even manages to throw in a couple of marriages that will be of interest to old fans like me.

FOR REFERENCE:

This Love and Rockets collection was originally serialized in Love and Rockets Vol. III [a/k/a "New Stories"], Nos. 7-8 and Love and Rockets Vol. IV, nos. 1-2 and 6-15.

Contents: Our Lady of the Assassinating Angels -- If It Ain't Fixed, Don't Break It! -- Eek! Tonta! -- Ilsa of the Islands by Tonta and Gomez -- Forest Spirits -- Billy, Be a Hero -- Frank Lopez -- 99° 36° -- Tonta -- Lifer Drawing -- Wary Mirth -- Eche Meve Dis -- Jury Doody -- Cherry Berry Richie Pip Perry Pembo -- Exactamente! (Lo Que Dijo Gordman) -- Rock Your Baby -- Tonta's Mind at 3AM -- Hi! -- Coach Tonta -- Wow! -- Maggie and Ray at 9:44PM -- Helen Heels -- Eppie Brianstone -- Wedding Walabaloo -- I Guess . . . -- Brown Alice, Alice Brown -- Locas -- It's Not All Love -- Not Today, You Don't -- Lader Daze show less