Comics I Bought This Week: April 7, 2012
I’m back from the comic shop this week and I got nine new comics plus a trade paperback collection:
And now for a review of something I’ve read recently.
”Love and Rockets: New Stories – Volume 3” By Jaime and Gilbert Hernandez
I somehow missed this when it came out back in 2010 but got it and volume four last Christmas. Sometimes I let books like this sit around a while. I savor looking forward to reading them because they don’t come out very often. I’m a big fan of the Hernandez brothers’ work and have sung there praises before and this volume is as good as all their other stuff.
We get a couple of stories from Gilbert. One is a sci-fi tale that is quite odd. It’s got sci-fi trappings rather than being real science fiction. It takes place on some far away planet where humans are doing some vague scientific study and interacting with two different humanoid species. Neither is as intelligent as humans are. The story is really about the people and not the science. It takes crazy twists and turns into dark and strange places as Gilbert likes to do.
His second story is about one of his actress characters, I think her name is Dora, and the choices she has to make. He splices in scenes from some of the movies she’s acted in and sometimes telling “Reality” from “Fiction” takes a moment. Once again some weird things are going on.
Jaime’s part of the book is about good old middle aged Maggie. ”Love and Rockets” was first popular back in the 80’s when Maggie and Hopey were cute teenaged punk rock chicks. But the characters have been allowed to age normally and for a good part of its life Jaime’s stories have been about Maggie’s rather normal life. Her life may no longer be filled with teenage excitement but she still has to live it just like we all do.
Jaime starts us out with a story about present day Maggie but then flashes back to when she was about eleven years old and moving to a new town with her family. It’s mostly about family and her siblings until it takes a dark turn that explains things back in the present story where things wind themselves up for this volume.
I can’t sing sing the praises of the Hernadez brothers highly enough. They can both write well and they can both draw well. Either brother is worth the price of admission and is well worth checking out.
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