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.html by Gilbert & Jaime Hernandez Back for a fourth printing, Volume 4 of the Love & Rockets Collection contains all the essential elements of Los Bros. Starting off with Gilbert's epic "Errata Stigmata" title story, and continuing through many, many short stories by both Gilbert and Jaime, including "Penny On the Road Ag'in," the entire "Rocky" saga, "The Reticent Heart," plus a bonus six-page story by Gilbert done for this volume, "The Many Faces of 'Big' Danny Chesterfield," Love & Rockets Volume 4 can't miss. With nearly all the collected volumes back in print, it's now easier than ever to see why Time magazine called this cartooning pair one of the Top 100 Innovators of the Century MATURE READERS. SC, 136pg, b&w

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.html by Gilbert Hernandez The most explosive Heartbreak Soup story ever, “Blood of Palomar” originally ran in Love & Rockets #21-26. In this saga, a serial killer stalks the streets of Palomar. Gruesome and senseless as his depredations are, they are dwarfed by the resulting social and psychological collapse suffered by the inhabitants of the tiny Central American village. Featuring all the Heartbreak Soup players - Heraclio, Luba, Tonantzin, Carmen, Pipo. “Blood of Palomar” is a true graphic novel - a masterpiece of comics that can hold its own next to any piece of literature. MATURE READERS SC, 8x11, 136pg, b&w

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.html by Jaime Hernandez From one of the Top 100 Innovators (according to Time magazine) comes the graphic novel that The Comics Journal called "one of the best stories in any medium" and named as the 13 th best comic book of all time! Beautifully drawn, "Wigwam Bam" is an amazingly rich meditation on the power memory has over one's everyday life, as presented through juxtaposition of the reality and idealization of the relationship between Jaime's best-loved characters, Maggie and Hopey. Praised by the likes of Alan Moore and Neil Gaiman, don't you miss out on one of the true comics geniuses of the 20th Century if you aren't reading Jaime Hernandez's work. SC, 8x11, 132pg, b&w

Gilbert Hernandez (Love and Rockets series) has produced some of the best comics work of the last ten years. Poison River is the story of one of his most engaging characters, Luba-self-possesed, intelligent an iconoclastically sexy- in the years before she arrived in Palomar, Hernandez's mythological Central American Village. We meet Maria, Luba's mother, beautiful, pampered and recklessly promiscuous. Maria's husband discovers that Luba is the result of a tool-shed trystwith Eduardo, a poor indian worker and kicks mother, child and lover out into poverty. Glamorous Maria abandons the other two in turn, and much later a teenage Luba meets her future husband Peter Rios, a conga player and small-time(soon to be big-time) gangster who takes her away to a life of privilege. But their meeting is not by chance and Rio's peculiar sexual obsessions (women's navels and well-hung chorus "girls") are driven by carnal memories of the exquisite Maria. Indeed Luba's new life (and the men in it) is much like her mother's - lavishly sheltered by violent anticommunist gangsters, who murder and terrorize the local "leftists" in the name of "business" and right-wing patriotism.

The Hernandez brothers recently published the last issue of their alternative comics groundbreaker, Love and Rockets. This book collects Jami's last stories from the magazine, which wrap up a saga begun in 1981. Heroine Maggie has been languishing at her aunt Vicki's women wrestler's camp in rural Texas. Jamie brings back other cast members, ranging from Maggie's sister Esther to Billionaire's wife Penny Century, and even makes a nod to the fantastic series' early science fiction slant. Of course, at the very end, Maggie is reunited with soul mate Hopey.

by Jaime Hernandez This women's-wrestling extravaganza follows two tag-team partners as they make their way through the sports scene in Texas.

From Gilbert Hernandez, the acclaimed co-creator of Love & Rockets, comes Fear of Comics, a collection of short stories penned with Beto's signature surrealistic and often experimental style (along with good doses of sex and humor ). A number of seemingly absurd stories in Fear of Comics can be read as existential dialogues between Hernandez's ego and id, including "Peripeteia," featuring a woman and her anthropomorphic jack-in-the-box, Bolo Cereal, both of whom are attended to by miniature, flying "love gremlins." The two debate the existence of God amidst the gremlins, who serve as living embodiments of their faith, ebbing and flowing in the light of their masters' consciousness. Fear of Comics spotlights the full range of Hernandez's talent. Other stories include "All With a Big Hello," "Roy," "Heroin," "Glorified Magnified," "She Sleeps With Anybody But Me," and "Shout Ramirez and Her Very Best Friend, Dinky," which includes an appearance by the aforementioned love gremlins. One of the last stories, "Abraxas," curiously blends elements from earlier, seemingly unrelated stories, with characters from "Spirit of the Thing" visited by ten-story-high versions of the love gremlins. Fear of Comics collects for the first time the very best of Hernandez's short fiction from the pages of his New Love comic book series, and 8 New Love covers, as well as stories from Zero Zero, rare Vortex Comics stories, and a piece from the Goody Good #1

Luba in America spotlights Gilbert Hernandez's most beloved Love & Rocketscharacter. Luba, of course, was the central figure of Hernandez'sPalomar, the south-of-the-border town that Gilbert documented for 15years in the original Love & Rockets series (1981-1996). Inthis collection, however, we find Luba has moved to America, startingan entirely fresh new chapter in her life. The book begins with Lubatraveling to the big city, supposedly having left Palomar to pave theway for her husband to join her in America. Readers quickly discover, however, that she has a direr mission. Luba fears that her politicalhistory has left a threat to her family from the old country, and shebelieves that the only way to end this threat lies in America. Theresulting action is an awesome blend of political intrigue, sexuality, and Gilbert's characteristically human portrayal of his characters, most notably his women.

Book by Hernandez, Jaime

A graphic novel collecting Love and Rockets stories from the "Locas" universe. It starts with a barely-glimpsed slaying ("Life Through Whispers") and ends with a funeral ("Male Torso Found in L.A. River"). Even though (or perhaps because) he's still carrying the torch for Maggie, Ray diligently pursues the dangerous and annoying "Frogmouth," aspiring actress and full-time train wreck, from seedy bars and back alleys through comic book conventions... all the way to the ultimate, and unexpected, consummation. Meanwhile, Hopey spends an eventful week during which she undergoes a couple of major life changes, both personal and professional... and for that matter cosmetic. New characters include Hopey's long-suffering on-the-side squeeze Grace; Maggie's new roommate, the sweet-natured jockette "Angel of Tarzana;" and the live-wire would-be gangsta Elmer - while such classic Love and Rockets characters as the hard-living Doyle, the aging but still-rocking Terry, and the mysterious super-heroine Alarma pop up in the margins... As does Maggie, well off stage but visible as Ray's resentful ex, Angel's roommate, and (forever and still) Hopey's best friend.

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

Originally serialized in Love and Rockets New Stories, Ti-Girls Adventures managed to be both a rollickingly creative super-hero joyride (featuring three separate super-teams and over two dozen characters) that ranged from the other side of the universe to Maggie 's shabby apartment, and a genuinely dramatic fable about madness, grief, and motherhood as Penny Century 's decades-long quest to become a genuine super-heroine are finally, and tragically, fulfilled. In addition to introducing a plethora of wild new characters, God and Science brings in many older characters from Jaime 's universe, some from seemingly throwaway shorter strips and some from Maggie 's day-to-day world (including some real surprises). The main heroine of the story, forming a bridge between the realistic Maggie stories and the super-heroic extravaganza is Angel, Maggie 's sweet-tempered and athletic new roommate and best friend, and now herself an aspiring super-heroine. Aside from being presented in a large format that really displays Jaime Hernandez 's stunning art, God and Science will be a director 's cut version that includes a full 30 new pages in addition to the original 100-page epic, including four new full-color faux Ti-Girls covers, several expansions of scenes, an epilogue set back in Maggie 's apartment, and a long fantasy/timewarp sequence that draws the focus back on Penny 's awful predicament.

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.

A collection of new stories from the alternative comic series created by three Mexican-American brothers from Southern California. It was the first comic series to give a voice to minorities and women in the medium's then 50-year history. This collection features all-new stories.

In the concluding 50-page half of Jaime's outrageous, acclaimed, full-on superhero mash-up "Ti-Girls Adventures," our protagonist, rookie do-gooder Boot Angel, learns more hard lessons about becoming a superheroine. Featuring wall-to-wall action ending in a big superhero family reunion that unexpectedly takes place in Maggie's tiny, messy one-bedroom apartment. Meanwhile, Gilbert turns in two mind-benders of his own. "Hypnotwist" is Gilbert's 39-page epic story of a beautiful, leggy redhead's surreal journey into a night filled with mysterious shady characters, dreamlike violence, and sparkling retro spike heels. But is it real, or something else? For readers trying to parse the truth, Gilbert ups the ante by telling the whole story without using a single word. And "Sad Girl" is the tale of a disaffected young bombshell actress nicknamed "Killer" and the web of jealousy, gossip, notoriety and mystery that surrounds her.

After Jaime's two-part super-hero epic from Love and Rockets: New Stories #1 and #2, we return to the enthralling minutiae of the Locas cast's lives for the first time in three years. In the main story Ray finally gets his date with Maggie: The couple goes to an art opening and to dinner, they discuss the crazy world of dreams, and Maggie asks Ray for a huge favor. Also in this volume, Brown Town, Blue Sun, a new installment in Jaime's beloved little kids flashback series: A ten-year-old Maggie and her family move away from Hoppers to a desert ghost town And on the Gilbert side of the ledger, Scarlet by Starlight is a story starring Fritz (of High Soft Lisp fame) that (in contrast to #2's silent masterpiece Hypnotwist) consists entirely of a 14-page dialogue scene. Killer/Sad Girl/Star picks up the Sad Girl character from LRNS #2, and how no one in her family takes her budding film career seriously.

With Love and Rockets: New Stories #3, Jaime Hernandez returned to his beloved Loca Maggie after a three-year hiatus, and the resultant stories one ( The Love Bunglers ) set in the here and now detailing Maggie s continued romantic travails, and one, the heartrending Browntown (which was immediately hailed as one of the very best stories in the 30-year history of the series), set in her teenage days and involving some previously unseen members of her family.Love and Rockets: New Stories #4 picks up both of these storylines, first with the conclusion to Love Bunglers (did Maggie really dump Ray again?), then with a sequel of sorts to Browntown in which teenage Maggie returns to Hoppers and a new life.Meanwhile, on the Gilbert side of town, High Soft Lisp s Fritz returns in Talkabout, a 15-page dialogue with an old beau. Second up is the 35-page King Vampire: Two lovable teens, Cecil and Trini, want to join a local vampire club but real vampires show up and things get serious. Cecil loves it but Trini has her doubts about going all the way. But wait is this a real story or another Fritz movie ? Some of the characters look awfully familiar

How do you follow up a one-two punch like Jaime Hernandez 's stunning two-part masterpiece The Love Bunglers from LRNS #3 and #4, which sent Maggie and Ray 's relationship in a startling new direction, as well as providing some mind-blowing revelations about Maggie 's (and her family s) past? If you re Jaime, you deftly move sideways and switch focus to other characters, specifically Ray 's ex, the rambunctious Frogmouth. In Crime Raiders International Mobsters and Executioners, Mu eca, the Frogmouth 's half-sister, comes to visit for a weekend and sees what kind of life the Frog Princess is living with Reno and Borneo as well as a brand new character or two. On the other-brother side, Gilbert Hernandez celebrates the 30th anniversary by bringing one of his current characters ( Killer, granddaughter to the legendary Luba) into the Palomar milieu in a story that showcases a fictionalized movie Palomar (starring Fritz as a combination of Luba and Tonantz n), even as it brings back a number of the classic Palomar characters for real. This will be a much-anticipated homecoming for fans of the classic Love and Rockets of the 1980s. Thirty years in, Love and Rockets continues to surprise and delight.

Love and Rockets enters its fourth decade with the latest installment of this acclaimed graphic novel-format iteration, featuring both old friends and new faces, and some genuine surprises... The cover shows Gilbert's new star Killer in a pose and milieu that will bring back memories for long-time fans—imitating the hammer-wielding Luba in her adopted Palomar. That's because Killer has discovered that her great-grandmother Maria (Luba's mother) starred in a late 1950s crime movie, and begins to delve into the details of her family's twisted history. Complicating things is the fact that Luba's half-sister Fritz played Maria in an amped-up biopic version of her life, creating a postmodern alternate version of the classic "Poison River" which originally told Maria's story (in a tie-in release, see page 52 for the graphic novel version of this movie, Maria M. Part One)! In the other half of the book, Jaime continues to explore his intriguing new character Tonta: In "Fuck Summer," Tonta is talked into joining the summer swim team but can't figure out why the brand new swim coach knows her—so, with help from friends, she sets out to find the answer. Meanwhile, something far more sinister is brewing behind the scenes...

The seventh annual volume of Love and Rockets: New Stories, the most important and enduring alternative comics series in the history of the medium, finds Gilbert and Jaime Hernandez writing and drawing at the top of their game. In Jaime s stories, Maggie and Hopey take a much-needed break from their humdrum domestic lives and go on a road trip to visit a sick friend. And, when the cat s away, Ray visits some old, sick friends of his own. Plus Tonta s nutty family! Gilbert offers a suite of stories, including The Magic Voyage of Aladdin, a sweeping epic of derring-do in which Morgan Le Fey (Fritz) teams up with Aladdin to stop the evil Circle from obtaining the magic lamp; The Golem Suit, a WWII sci-fi thriller starring Killer; and Daughters and Mothers and Daughters, in which flashbacks to Luba s mother Maria reveal how ugly secrets of the past affect their family today."

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

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.”

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.

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.

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.

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.

Dig this scene! Low-life drug dealer Dewey Booth has $200,000 that even-lower-lifes want. BLING! Wes is a rock and roll loser that only wants to buy a club where nobody can tell him he can't sing or perform. WAILIN'! He's known Dewey for years, but that isn't enough to get his dough. Wes needs help. Nala is an uber-stacked bombshell whose pleasure in life is to seduce and then humiliate men dumb enough to fall for her. HUSH HUSH! For half the dough, she agrees to help Wes get Dewey's ill-gotten goods. Things don't go so well when a wily grifter from Wes' past shows up to complicate things. GULP! Vincene is another troublemaker who enjoys wrecking people's plans and wants the Dewey dough, too. In the end, deadly fires ignite, heads literally roll, eyes are shot out—and all Wes wants to do is sing in a rock and roll club. The Troublemakers is the second volume in a series of original graphic novels in which Gilbert Hernandez creates comics adaptations of movies starring or co-starring Luba's half-sister Rosalba "Fritz" Martinez from Love and Rockets. The first, the dystopian Chance in Hell (in which Fritz has only a bit part), was released in 2007. This hard boiled, pulp graphic novel will delight longtime Hernandez fans as well as provide a perfect introduction to newcomers to Hernandez's work.

The third in Gilbert Hernandez’s line of original hardcovers featuring Love and Rockets’ “Fritz” in her guise as a Z-movie actress (the first two were Chance in Hell and The Troublemakers) is a trippy thriller that stars Fritz in no fewer than three roles. A beautiful waitress (Fritz, of course) and her hospital nurse brother (also Fritz) visit their estranged father, a once successful but now retired writer (amazingly enough, also Fritz), in order to find out the true reason why their mother committed suicide. When dad’s health fails, the siblings are then more concerned with the money he might leave them. The story weaves in and out of reality and hallucination and possibly back in forth in time, and to complicate things further, the sister is sexually obsessed with a mysterious man throughout the tale—or is it her brother (at one point posing as his sister so that he might gain his and her inheritance) that is so hot and bothered by this mystery stud? And that’s only the tip of the iceberg. There’s also a venture into ghost territory, with frauds bilking the gullible and Fritz’s character(s) right in the middle.

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.

For the first time ever, Fantagraphics is proud to present a single-volume collection of Gilbert Hernandez's "Heartbreak Soup" stories from Love & Rockets, which along with RAW magazine defined the modern literary comics movement of the post-underground generation. This massive volume collects every "Heartbreak Soup" story from 1993 to 2002 in one 500-page deluxe hardcover edition, presenting the epic for the first time as the single novel it was always intended to be. Palomar is the mythical Central American town where the "Heartbreak Soup" stories take place. The stories weave in and out of the town's entire population, crafting an intricate tapestry of Latin American experience. Hernandez's densely plotted and deeply imagined tales are often compared with magic realist authors like Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Isabel Allende (House of the Spirits). His depictions of women and Mexican-American experience have been universally lauded as the best examples the artform has to offer. Luba, the guiding spirit of Palomar since the outset, has been hailed by The Nation, Rolling Stone, and Time magazine as one of the great characters of contemporary American fiction. Hernandez's work, in addition to the obvious magic realist comparisons, shares an affinity with other Latin American and Spanish writer/artists, like Frida Kahlo, Federico Garcia Lorca and Pablo Picasso, all of whom applied a surrealist eye to what they saw and experienced. Palomar follows the lives of its residents from Luba's arrival in the town to her exit, twenty years later. Included are such classic tales as "Sopa de Gran Pena," "Ecce Homo," "An American in Palomar," "Human Diastrophism," and "Farewell, Mi Palomar." Palomar presents one of the richest accomplishments in the history of the artform in its ideal format for the first time, making it a must-have for longtime Love & Rockets fans and new readers alike.

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.