Comics I Bought: December 17, 2009
I’m back from the comic shop this week and I got one new comic plus a hard cover collection:
And now for a review of something I’ve read recently.
This is the second volume in the new 100 page trade paperback “Love and Rockets” format where we get 50 pages of Jaime Hernandez and 50 Pages of Gilbert Hernandez.
Since they’re brothers and have a comic of their work published together I am always asking myself which I like better. I think everyone does that. Most people I know like Jaime’s work better (or at least they used to because I don’t know many L&R fans anymore) but I think that’s mainly because his drawings are prettier. I’m attracted to the prettiness of the work too but I think Gilbert’s work is more expressive. I think he has greater range. Anyway, it’s a question I can never answer except to say that I seem to like best the work of which ever of them I’m reading at the time.
Jaime continues and concludes his super hero story that he started in the first issue. They are all female super heros who feud and battle their way through the volume. Jaime has an unusual take on super heros. Their is a plot going on that is fairly simple but convoluted at the same time.
That’s because the story is not really about the plot but about the relationships between the heroines as they fight and generally go about seeking their goals. And the relationships between the women gets complex as we learn their histories and goals. All this and lots and lots of fight scenes too. No decompressed storytelling here. Jaime can pack a lot in and keep a story moving.
Gilbert gives us two stories. The first is an eight pager about one of his characters. A high school girl nicknamed “Killer”. I enjoyed this story as it was a straightforward little character story.
Gilbert’s second story, the forty page “Hypnotwist”, I didn’t like as much. It was a wordless story that read like a dream that is full of symbolism. I’m not a fan of wordless stories in general as comics, to me, are words and pictures together. Take one or the other away and you don’t have comics anymore.
The story is actually well done despite it not being to my taste. I easily followed it through the first half or so but then I got lost. That may be because my attention wasn’t held by the format or it maybe because I lost the thread of symbolism as new characters were introduced.
Gilbert has such a vast array of characters and the time between issues of Love and Rockets is long I can’t always remember who everyone is. Someone who knows the characters better than me might be able to follow the symbolism easier.
So there is the latest “Love and Rockets” for you in it’s newest format. No matter what I think of any individual story I’m always down with a new issue of L&R.
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