277 pages! The 30th anniversary Love and Rockets celebration continues with this, the first volume of the Love and Rockets Library collecting the adventures of the spunky Maggie, her annoying best friend and sometimes lover Hopey, and their circle of friends, including their bombshell friend Penny Century, Maggie's weirdo mentor Izzy—as well as the wrestler Rena Titanon and Maggie's handsome love interest, Rand Race... "Maggie the Mechanic" collects the earliest, punkiest, most heavily sci-fi stories of Maggie and her circle of friends, and you can see the artist (who drew like an angel from the very first panel) refine his approach: Despite these strong shifts in tone, the stunning art and razor sharp characterizations keep this collection consistent, and enthralling throughout. "The Love and Rockets Vol. 1 reprints may be my favorite publishing project of the last five years, and there are a lot of fine projects going on... the smaller, bargain-priced volumes \[are\] the perfect vehicle for that material, the best comics series of all time." — Tom Spurgeon, The Comics Reporter

The 25th anniversary Love and Rockets celebration continues with this, the second of three volumes collecting the adventures of the spunky Maggie; her annoying, pixie-ish best friend and sometime lover Hopey; and their circle of friends, including their bombshell friend Penny Century, Maggie's weirdo mentor Izzy—as well as the aging but still heroic wrestler Rena Titañon and Maggie's handsome love interest, Rand Race. After the sci-fi trappings of his earliest stories (as seen in Maggie the Mechanic, the first volume in this series), Hernandez refined his approach, settling on the more naturalistic environment of the fictional Los Angeles barrio, Hoppers, and the lives of the young Mexican-Americans and punk rockers who live there. A central story and one of Jaime's absolute peaks is "The Death of Speedy." Such is Jaime's mastery that even though the end of the story is telegraphed from the very title, the downhill spiral of Speedy, the local heartthrob, is utterly compelling and ultimately quite surprising. Also in this volume, Maggie begins her on-again off-again romance with Ray D., leading to friction and an eventual separation from Hopey. (Note: A number of these stories, including a whole cycle of wrestling stories starring or co-starring Rena Titañon, were not collected in the hardcover Locas.)

From the third book that collects the classic "Locas" comics storyline from Love and Rockets : Jaime drops a narrative bomb on Hopey in "Wigwam Bam." And Maggie contends with her inner demons, a murderer, a woman wrestler, and … gets married? The fifth book in The Complete Love and Rockets Library is the third in the classic "Locas" comics storyline. Perla La Loca begins with the "Wigwam Bam," arguably writer-artist Jaime Hernandez's definitive statement on post-punk culture. As Maggie, Hopey, and the rest of the Locas prowl Los Angeles, the East Coast, and parts in between, they try to recapture the carefree spirit of those early days. "Wigwam Bam" brings us up to date on all the members of Jaime's extensive cast of characters and then drops a narrative bomb on Hopey (and us) in the very last pages. Split up from Hopey yet again, Maggie bounces back and forth between a one-laundromat town in Texas (the "Chester Square" that serves as the title of two of the strongest stories in the book), where she has to contend with both her own inner demons, a murderous foe, and Camp Vicki, where she has to fend off her aunt Vicki's attempts to make her a professional wrestler and the unwanted advances of champ-to-be, Gina. These stories originally appeared circa 1990–1996 in the long-running (and ongoing) Love and Rockets comic book series, also featuring work by Jaime's brothers, Gilbert and Mario. Characters change as they age in "real-time" in stories that span generations. L&R has been called "the greatest American comic book series of all time" by Rolling Stone and "a great, sprawling American novel" by GQ . It broke ground with its craft and the casual intersectionality of its huge and diverse casts of nuanced characters (many of whom are LGBQTIA+) who live and have relationships in often-naturalistic settings and situations. Black and white illustrations throughout

This volume is the second in a chronological series, The Complete Love and Rockets Library, and the first that collects comics writer-artist Gilbert Hernandez's main "Palomar" storyline and more. Heartbreak Soup reprints the earliest tales a small Central American town, Palomar, beginning with the groundbreaking "Sopa de Gran Pena" (which introduces most of his main cast of characters as children, plus imposing newcomer Luba), and continuing on through such classics as "Ecce Homo," "Act of Contrition," "Duck Feet," and the great love story "For the Love of Carmen." In addition to seeing Hernandez develop as a cartoonist from 1983 to 1988, readers will see how he draws characters with various body types that change as they age in "real-time." These stories first appeared in the long-running (and ongoing) Love and Rockets comics series, also featuring work by Gilbert's brothers, Jaime and Mario. L has been called "the greatest American comic book series of all time" by Rolling Stone and "a great, sprawling American novel" by GQ. It broke ground with its craft and the casual intersectionality of its huge and diverse casts of nuanced characters (many of whom are LGBQTIA+) who live and have relationships in often-naturalistic settings and situations (although L has SF and magical realist elements too). Along with contemporaries Chris Ware, Lynda Barry, and Daniel Clowes, the Hernandez brothers pushed the comics medium into new artistic heights.

For the first half decade of Love and Rockets, Gilbert Hernandez focused on fleshing out his small Central American hamlet of Palomar. But eventually this became too restrictive for the kinds of stories he wanted to tell, and he created, in quick succession, two major standalone graphic novels. Beyond Palomar collects these two groundbreaking works, together for the first time. "Poison River" is a dizzying period piece often hailed as one of Hernandez's masterpieces. It traces the pre-Palomar childhood of Luba, her teenage marriage to gangster Peter Rio, the secrets behind her mysterious mother, all the way up to her subsequent escape and arrival in Palomar. This story introduces a number of characters and themes that occupied later issues of Love and Rockets (including Luba's mother Maria and her sinister guardian angel Gorgo), and is a riveting page-turner besides, with lots of sex, drugs, guns, politics, and women who can crack walnuts with their stomachs. "Love and Rockets X," set in the early 1990s (in the waning years of Bush I's post-Reagan hangover, with Gulf War I in the background), takes us from plush Beverly Hills to the dangerous east side and introduces us to a dizzyingly diverse cast of characters, including a lowlife rock 'n' roll band, a "posse" of black youths, a ditzy Hollywood mom and her spoiled son, a gay activist filmmaker and his rebellious, half-Iraqi daughter, and a group of racist thugs whose violent attack on an older woman sets the plot in motion—as well as bringing in several older characters, including a couple of Palomar expatriates. Beyond Palomar is a wildly original diptych of graphic novels by one of the great cartooning talents of the last quarter century.

To a very great extent, Love Rockets is synonymous with Hoppers' Maggie Hopey and Palomar's Luba Carmen Heraclio Tonantzin... but there was always more to L than that. Amor y Cohetes finally collects together in one convenient package all the non-Maggie and non-Palomar stories by all three Hernandez Brothers from that classic first, 50-issue Love Rockets series—a dizzying array of styles and approaches that re-confirms these groundbreaking cartoonists' place in the history of comics. The book leads off with Gilbert's original 40-page sci-fi epic "BEM" from 1981's very first issue of Love Rockets, featuring a very different Luba and a much looser, Heavy Metal and Marvel Comics-inspired way of storytelling. Other stories include Jaime's charming "Rocky and Fumble" series starring a planet-hopping girl and her robot; stunning one-shots such as Gilbert's Frida Kahlo biography and his shocking autobiographical fantasia "My Love Book"; Mario's genre thrillers which take place "Somewhere in California"; Gilbert's brutally dystopian "Errata Stigmata"; the playful "Hernandez Satyricon," with Gilbert drawing Jaime's characters, and "War Paint," with Jaime trying out Palomar; Gilbert's light-hearted "Music for Monsters" starring Bang and Inez; and even a fantastical "non-continuity" Maggie and Hopey story "Easter Hunt" by Jaime that didn't fit into the other books. Amor y Cohetes, the seventh volume in the new "Complete Love Rockets" series of compact, affordable paperbacks.

Picking up right after Perla La Loca, the third volume of the definitive Maggie series repackaging, this compilation of stories from Jaime Hernandez s solo comic Penny Century and his subsequent return to Love and Rockets(Volume II) charts the further lives of his beloved Locas. But first... wrestling Penny Century starts off with a blast with Whoa, Nellie, a unique graphic novelette in which Maggie, who has settled in withher pro-wrestler aunt for a while, experiences that wild and woolly world first-hand.Then it s back to chills and spills with the old cast of Hopey, Ray Dominguez, and Izzy Ortiz including Maggie sromantic dream fantasia The Race and the definitive Ray story, Everybody Loves Me, Baby. Penny Century also features two major flashback stories: Bay of Threes finally reveals the full back story behindBeatriz Penny Century Garcia, Maggie s long-time, bleached-blonde bombshell friend (who gives this volume its nameand can currently be seen as a super-villainess in Love and Rockets: New Stories), while Home School is one of Hernandez s popular looks at his characters lives from when they were little kids, drawn in an adorable simplified Dennis theMenace type style.

As Jaime and Gilbert Hernandez continue to delight readers new and old with the continuing adventures of their characters in the annual _Love and Rockets: New Stories_, Fantagraphics continues to collect their earlier stories in these fat, handy, and inexpensive collections. In this batch of “Locas” stories by Jaime Hernandez from the pages of _Love and Rockets Volume II (picking up where 2010’s Penny Century_ collection left off), an older and wiser Maggie faces down her old demons and the “Ghost of Hoppers” in a full-length graphic novel (which also introduces one of Jaime’s greatest recent characters, Vivian the “Frogmouth,” the near-psychotic bombshell). Meanwhile, the ever-feisty but maturing Hopey (her Spanish birth name giving this collection its title) transitions from tending bar to teaching kindergarten (while still juggling a complex love life), and the final quarter of the book shows Maggie’s lovable ex Ray Dominguez being dragged into the aftermath of a grisly murder thanks to his falling for the “Frogmouth.”

Gilbert Hernandez’s sprawling family saga focuses on the United States, where newly immigrated Luba and her sisters, body-builder Petra and therapist/film star Fritz, find their families’ and friends’ lives becoming more and more intertwined. As the three sisters have “memories of sweet youth,” the next generation finds the spotlight: Luba’s adult daughter Doralís emcees the proceedings in her role as mischievous host of a children’s TV show, while Petra’s little girl, Venus, has adventures with her aunt Fritz and her best friend Yoshio. At her mother’s urging, Venus also writes missives to her fierce, one-armed cousin Casimira, who’s back in Palomar. In these stories—never before collected together—Venus tells it like it is!

In Ofelia, the sisters, the kids, and the cousins are all settled comfortably in California after leaving Palomar in Luba and Her Family. Luba and her cousin Ofelia's relationship has always been fraught, but when Ofelia threatens to write a book about Luba, past memories, secrets, resentments, and pain resurface. Meanwhile, Luba's children genius Socorro, recently out-and-proud Doralis, and prickly Maricela show that a talent for trouble may be hereditary. Luba's sisters, Fritz and Petra, swap lovers (as usual), but . . . are Fritz and family friend Pipo sittin' in a tree? These vividly drawn characters are charged with Hernandez's trademark complexity; they live, love, age, fight and die in this sweeping, multigenerational saga.