Imaginary Friends, Fictional Landscapes

[saavedra77]

I've been reading Love & Rockets since the mid-1980s.  I feel as though grew up with Xaime Hernandez' Margarita "Maggie" Chascarillo and Esperanza "Hopey" Glass, and I love the way that these characters have evolved over the years.  More than any other fictional characters I can think of, they're like people I know--people I've known since "we" were teenagers.

I've always been a big fan of Beto Hernandez' Palomar stories, too: I certainly won't be the first to liken these to Gabriel Garcia Marquez' Macondo or Fellini's Amarcord--tightly-knit fictional communities whose dozens of characters you come to know with the intimacy of family, or at least with the intimacy of the village gossip.

Which is why it looks like I'm spending a big chunk of this weekend in Georgetown:

 "Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery is pleased to present '25 Years of Love & Rockets.' This multicultural comic book epic by Los Angeles brothers Gilbert and Jaime Hernandez single handedly launched the alternative comics genre, and remains as fresh and relevant today as when it was introduced in 1982. A riveting combination of punk, futurism, Latino and North American pop culture, 'Love & Rockets' inspired a generation of narrative artists. The publication of this title cemented the position of Seattle-based Fantagraphics Books as the leading publisher of challenging comics and graphic novels. This exhibition of original artwork opens with a gala reception for Los Bros Hernandez on Saturday, February 10, from 5:00 to 8:00 PM at Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery, located at 1201 S. Vale St., in the heart of Seattle's lively Georgetown district."

Comments

[morganminstrel.livejournal.com]

Alas, I am a completist. ;-)

But seriously, are you suggesting skipping the first books and getting to it where the series(es) really started to gell? Or are the first few worth it?

It's funny, in college I was essentially handed Cerebus, Beanworld, Deadface/Bacchus, Eightball, Hate (which, amusingly, I hated), etc., but no one ever pushed L&R on me. Which is odd, because I probably would have been just as receptive to it as I was to (most) of the others.

[saavedra77.livejournal.com]

Well, it depends: I'd stress that the earlier Maggie & Hopey stories ("Music for Mechanics," for example) are very different, wordier, with more fantastic elements. There are still fantastic touches in the later stories (H.R. Costigan's horns, for example), but the rockets and dinosaurs have pretty much disappeared. The stories are by this point more about life in "Hoppers" (basically, Oxnard, CA)--not so glamorous, but very, very involving. I point this out because I've known readers who were turned off by the early stuff. And I thought there was a kind of ... cognitive dissonance between the period when Maggie's traveling the world as a "prosolar mechanic" and later parts of the story where she's hanging in the barrio fixin' cars (and I prefer the latter part).

On the other hand, if you have a taste for fantasy (particulary the tongue-in-cheek variety), you probably won't mind the rockets and dinosaurs. Just bear in mind that the focus will change, over time.

Looking back at Beto's work, on the other hand, the most important distinction seems to be whether the story takes place in Palomar or not. (Much of the rest of his work has tended to be surrealistic or fantastic. But the Palomar stories are very consistent, very earthy stuff, from the beginning.) There are several places where you could start, but I think that the first collection, "Chelo's Burden," would provide an equally or more appropriate starting-point.