.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
Jaime and his brother Gilbert Hernández mostly publish their separate storylines together in Love And Rockets and are often referred to as 'Los Bros Hernandez'.
As a lifelong Californian, I'm almost ashamed by the fact that it took the passion of a friend and fellow writer from North Carolina and a fine piece by Sam Thielman in the New Yorker to call my attention to Los Bros Hernandez and the Love and Rockets underground comics franchise. Blessed with an amazing books and games shop in my newly adopted hometown of Livermore, CA, I am now able to chase down any comic or graphic novel imaginable, so I took the time recently to grab this 2002 edition of Love and Rockets Book 4 - Tears from Heaven, and it did not disappoint.
Since their humble beginnings in 1981, the three brothers behind Love and Rockets, Jaime, Gilbert, and Mario Hernandez, have held fast to the maxim that each can do whatever he wants with his stories. As a result, a book like Tears from Heaven, a bound collection of stories originally released as individual comic books, is necessarily a whiplash of disconnected narratives. Surprisingly, this disconnection in no way detracts from the unique casts of characters each brother has created or the penetrating themes the stories address, from love, power, and family to social morality, sexuality, stigmatization, and more. And I have to admit, reading about an underground comics franchise created in the early 1980s by three Latino kids from L.A., I did not expect the clean and vivid artwork one finds in these comics. That visual clarity combines with storylines that intermittently shock, amuse, and entertain in ways that are both original and prescient.
This is the third book of Love and Rockets that I've read. (The Library didn't have #2 on the shelf.)
I'm quite impressed with Jaime's art work and his stories are deep and intriguing. I really love Gilbert's stories of Palomar. What I appreciate about both of them is the depth of their story telling. Now that I've read a few of their books, I can see the layering of the stories and the attention to detail.
In this book, with Jaime, we get a detailed back story of one of the characters that takes place as the same timeline as in book #1. Also, Gilbert's story recalls an incident that also happened in book #1.
In spite of a fairly gruesome and chilling start with the origins of Errata Stigmata, this volume felt much more light-hearted than the three before it. There's a big Palomar party with the requisite drunkenness & fighting; some Penny Century goofiness; scattered Locas lore, including a little info on Izzy's background; and the introduction of space-adventurer-wannabe Rocky and her robo-sidekick Fumble. All good fun. (This edition -- like the previous -- includes a full colour cover section!)
A bit too much Maggie-Hopey stuff and Gilbert's detout into the less than essential Errata Stigmata drops this down to a three. But there is still plenty of great Palomar action from Gilbert Hernandez, together with tantalising Rocket Rhodes pieces by Jaime.