Comics I Bought: October 23, 2008
I’m back from the comic shop this week and I got two new comics, a trade paperback, plus a hard cover collection:
And now for a review of something I’ve read recently.
In the Eighties and Nineties “Love and Rockets” was printed at magazine size. Then it was relaunched in the new century at comic book size. Both of those formats were collected into various trade paperback after they were initially published. This new version of “Love and Rockets” weighs in at a hefty 100 pages and is printed in a nearly square trade paperback format.
“Love and Rockets” is one of those comics that never got me excited. I don’t know why. Don’t get me wrong, I like it. I’ve bought every issues since the late Eighties and recently purchased the big hardcover collection of Jamie Hernandez’s L&R stories called “Locas” but whenever a new issue came out I’d pick it up and was never in a rush to read it. Maybe it was the format. Issues were few and far between and who could remember what the story was three or four months later?
When I’d start reading a new issue I’d slowly get into it and enjoy myself. “Love and Rockets” is good stuff and that would always shine through when I read it. It would just always be on the bottom of the pile of stuff I had to read because I knew I’d have to refresh myself on what was going on.
So I like this new format. It gives me a big chunk of “Love and Rockets” to read. I like the variety of stories in it too. We get a forty eight page story (broken up into two parts to lead off and finish the book) from Jamie Hernandez about a group of female super heroes (not your usual super hero story). And a bunch of stories from Gilbert Hernandez that are of varying lengths. Some featuring familiar characters and some not.
This isn’t really a review of the work itself. If you are not aware of “Love and Rockets” and the talents of The Hernandez Brothers by now then where the hell have you been? No, this is more about the format. “Love and Rockets” was one of the first comics to be “written for the trades” and that is probably why I never got excited to see a new issue come out but this new and larger format has gotten me excited. I really liked it. I enjoyed the variety of stories and the fact that one of them was a large chunk. Mixing the different lengths works for me. Plus these are two high quality cartoonists.
So if you’ve fallen off the “Love and Rockets” bandwagon because of the amount of time between issues or what to try it out for the first time “Love and Rockets: New Stories – 1” is a great place to jump on.
I was never a big Love & Rockets fan but I remember everyone loving it in college. And there's been so much product over the years I never knew where to even start trying to get into it.
Maybe I'll give it a read now.