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From the pages of Love and Rockets, the life of one of comics’ most seductive heroine. “Five six. Hundred twenty-eight pounds. Forty-three twenty-two thirty-six. High soft lisp. Genius level I.Q.” That’s how motivational speaker Mark Herrera sums up Rosalba “Fritz” Martinez, bombshell, former punkette, former psychiatrist, “Z” movie star ― in this supremely sexy, constantly surprising graphic novel. And Herrera should know, being only one of many to fall under Fritz’s “lithping” spell―others including slobbish rocker Scott “The Hog” and high school nerd turned obsessive bodybuilder Enrique Escobar (and that’s just her husbands). Hernandez has taken this suite of stories (including the 48-page graphic novelette “High Soft Lisp”), originally serialized in the second volume of Love and Rockets, and fleshed them out with a dozen brand new pages, creating an original and inventive (and very steamy) volume that, through its connections to his main character Luba (Fritz is Luba’s half sister, and characters from the Luba stories pop up here), works both as a standalone graphic novel and a further exploration of Hernandez’s rich world. 144 pages of b/w comics

It begins in the year 1900, with the scream of a newborn. It ends, 100 pages later, in the year 2000, with the death rattle of a 100-year-old man. The infant and the old man are both Julio, and Gilbert Hernandez's Julio's Day (originally serialized in Love and Rockets Vol. II but never completed until now) is his latest graphic novel, a masterpiece of elliptical, emotional storytelling that traces one life—indeed, one century in a human life—through a series of carefully crafted, consistently surprising and enthralling vignettes. There is hope and joy, there is bullying and grief, there is war (so much war—this is after all the 20th century), there is love, there is heartbreak. While Julio's Day has some settings and elements in common with Hernandez's Palomar cycle (the Central American protagonists and milieu, the vivid characters, the strong familial and social ties), this is a very much a singular, standalone story that will help cement his position as one of the strongest and most original cartoonists of this, or any other, century.

Featuring Hernandez's longtime Love and Rockets heroine Maggie, The Love Bunglers is tied together by the initial thread of the suppression of family history. Because these secrets can't be dealt with openly, their lingering effect is even more powerful. But Maggie's ability to navigate and find meaning in her life—despite losing her culture, her brother, her profession, and her friends—is what's made her a compelling character. After a lifetime of losses, Maggie finds, in the second half, her longtime off and on lover, Ray Dominguez. In taking us through lives, deaths, and near-fatalities, The Love Bunglers encapsulates Maggie's emotional history as it moves from resignation to memories of loss, to sudden violence (a theme in this story) and eventually to love and contentment. Much like what John Updike created in his four Rabbit novels, Jaime Hernandez has been following his longtime character, Maggie, around for several decades, all of which has seemed to be building towards this book in particular.

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.

A three-act story following the life of a young girl adopted out of a hellish slum by a decent man. She eventually marries a kind, well-to-do man, but finds that she can't escape the darkness and violence she left behind. Gilbert Hernandez's first original graphic novel from Fantagraphics follows on the heels of his acclaimed graphic novel, Sloth, from DC's Vertigo Comics in 2006. Chance in Hell tells the story about a little orphan girl who lives in the slum of slums. Nobody knows who she is or where she's from, but her fellow shantytown inhabitants collectively look over her. The three-act story follows our heroine as she is adopted by a decent man who raises her well, and she eventually marries a kind, well-to-do man, only to discover that she can't relate to the good life and the comforts it provides. This is the first in a series of standalone stories depicting the fictional filmography of Gilbert's Love and Rockets character, the B-movie actress Fritz. Hernandez wowed critics in 2003 with his epic work, Palomar, collecting more than 20 years of groundbreaking comics called "the most substantive single work that the comics medium has yet produced," by Booklist . Chance in Hell further establishes Hernandez as one of the great cartoonists of our age.

A woman comes to the U.S. from Latin America to escape her shady past, only to fall into a new shady life. After a go at the adult entertainment business, Maria marries a drug lord and her dangerous past is nothing compared to her new life in America. The drug lord's son, Gorgo, secretly falls in love with her and he watches over her like a guardian angel. Danger and corruption (and of course sex) drive the first half of this love story. Long-time Love and Rockets readers will find the storyline familiar... and that's because, in an Adaptation-style meta twist, Maria M. is actually the B-movie film adaptation of the life story of Luba's mother Maria, as previously seen in its "real" version in the classic graphic novel Poison River (available in the Beyond Palomar collection) — starring Maria's own daughter playing her own mother. Confused? Don't be! Maria M. will work perfectly on its own terms as the kind of violent, sexy pulp tale that Gilbert Hernandez has proven so adept at these past several years, and the "source material" for the story will just provide an extra layer of delight for the cognoscenti. Part two of Maria M. will be released in 2014.

A standalone graphic novel that shines a light on the family tree of one of Hernandez's most memorable characters of the past several years, the teenager Tonta. In this graphic novel, teenager Tonta is staying for the weekend with her half-sister, the self-absorbed Vivian. At home, Tonta's stepfather is shot during a botched burglary, which leads to the discovery of family secrets that require Tonta to confront some unpleasant truths that she previously managed to suppress or remain ignorant of. Through it all, Tonta showcases Hernandez's brilliant talent for character, weaving a host of characters and milieus from his vast arsenal. Meanwhile, back at school, Tonta and Gomez discover that Coach Angel harbors a secret of her own (can you say, "lucha libre?") while local punk band Ooot provides the soundtrack for a summer not soon to be forgotten. Black & white illustrations throughout.