After a nearly four-year cycle of stories starring his character Maggie Chascarrillo, LOVE AND ROCKETS, VOL II #12 sees Jaime Hernandez begin a seven-part saga focusing on Maggie’s longtime companion Hopey Glass. Hopey is older and seems somewhat forlorn or lost her story begins. It’s a testament to Jaime’s skills as a cartoonist that he conveys much of the story and character through his drawings. He doesn’t need to give Hopey one line of plaintiff wailings; her mood is clearly evident in the drawings and the atmosphere his art creates. Jaime also gives us another Ray story; full of wild characters and madcap plots, it’s similar in tone to the film, Go. It’s fun just to follow Ray and his cohorts to see what kind of trouble they get to and to read the snappy dialogue Jaime gives them.
Like Jaime, Gilbert Hernandez presents two more pieces of longer narratives, each centered on a particular character, this time Julio and Motivational Speaker Mark. This particular installment of the poignant historical drama, “Julio’s Day,” focuses on Julio’s brother, Benjamin who returns from World War II with a Japanese bride. The twists and turns of Mark’s relationship with Luba’s daughters Fritz & Petra are the focus of Gilbert’s other tale. It is a gut-wrenching mixture of soap opera melodrama and true-to-life theatrics.
Actually, I want to talk a little about the way Los Bros.’ stories are presented to readers. Every issue of Love and Rockets since the beginning over two decades ago has given us the brothers’ work in short tales. Even when these stories are collected in book form as graphic novels, they still read like short stories, though each has a connection to the other tales that forms a longer narrative.
Some reviewers and commentators have written that Gilbert’s work is best read in short segments, an analysis with which I disagree. I think that a lot of people are used to reading Gilbert’s long, involving, epic novels as the installments in which they are usually published in the L&R comic. In a four page “Julio’s Day” segment, Gilbert packs in as much story, background information, and as many characters as a 22-page comic book (if not more). Gilbert’s work (like Julio’s Day) presented in chapter form reads like complete story – each chapter coming across as being as much an independent as it is part of the larger narrative.
Some think that this impedes the selling of both Gilbert and Jaime’s work as graphic novels to new readers. The notion is that in collected form, these stories will read so much like a short story collection that it will put off buyers who actually want their graphic novel to read like a novel and not a bunch of short stories. I don’t think this is necessarily true, and actually this is narrow thinking. People who buy books, who read regularly, or may only read one book per year are certainly capable of grasping the nuances of reading short passages or short stories that are when combined with other pieces constitute a larger narrative. Hell, many prose novels actually work that way.
The success of Alex Robinson’s novels from Top Shelf (including the recent Tricked) prove that there is a market for comics that are contemporary dramas – a market that is small, but perhaps growing in comic book shops. Love and Rockets often fits as a contemporary drama, and as such has to be marketed to an audience that is or might be interested. They’ll decide what they think of the size and length of stories. Perhaps, some time in the future, the Hernandez Brothers should produce works that are meant to be originally published in book form. I just don’t think that we know enough to say definitively about how new readers will approach Los Bros. when most of our notions come from dealing with comics not in bookstores, but in comic book stores, where there aren’t a whole lot of new readers coming in to buy non-superhero comics.
Mr. Charlie #75 reminds you to support your local comic book shop (or LCS). However, if you can’t get Love and Rockets and other Los Bros. comics at your LCS, try the brothers’ publisher, Fantagraphics Books.
You can catch me at the NEGROMANCER talking about movies.
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