Love and Rockets (often abbreviated L&R) is a comic book series by the Hernandez brothers: Gilbert, Jaime, and Mario. It was one of the first comic books in the alternative comics movement of the 1980s. The Hernandez brothers produce stories in the series independently of each other. Gilbert and Jaime produce the majority of the material, and tend to focus on particular casts of characters and settings. Those of Gilbert usually focus on a cast of characters in the fictional Central American village of Palomar; the stories often feature magic realist elements. The Locas stories of Jaime center on a social group in Los Angeles, particularly the Latina friends and sometime-lovers Maggie and Hopey.

Publication history

The brothers Gilbert, Jaime, and Mario Hernandez self-published the first issue of Love and Rockets in 1981. In 1982, Fantagraphics Books republished this issue with a color cover. The series was published at magazine size, larger than typical American comic books. Either Gilbert or Jaime, the series' main contributors, would provide the front cover for a given issue, and the other the back; they alternated these duties each issue. The first volume ended with the 50th issue in 1996. The second volume ran for twenty issues from 2001 to 2007 in standard US comic book size. A third series, Love and Rockets: New Stories, which ran for eight issues, began in 2008, published annually in 100-page, graphic novel-sized issues. In 2016, the series returned to its original, magazine-sized format.

Overview

The Hernandez brothers self-published the first issue of Love and Rockets in 1981, but since 1982 it has been published by Fantagraphics Books. The brothers sent a copy of their self-published comic to The Comics Journal, an imprint of Fantagraphics, for a review. Gary Groth was so impressed with it that the company offered them a publishing deal. The magazine temporarily ceased publication in 1996 after the release of issue #50, while Gilbert and Jaime went on to do separate series involving many of the same characters. However, in 2001 "Los Bros Hernandez" (as they are often referred to) revived the series as Love and Rockets Volume 2. Love and Rockets contains several ongoing serial narratives, the most prominent being Gilbert's Palomar stories and Jaime's Hoppers 13 (aka Locas) stories. It also contains one-offs, shorter stories, surrealist jokes, and more. Palomar tells the story of a fictional village in Latin America and its inhabitants. Its vibrant characters and sometimes-fantastic events are sometimes compared to the magical realism literary style of authors such as Gabriel García Márquez and Jorge Luis Borges. The series is also sometimes referred to as Heartbreak Soup, after the first story set in Palomar. Hoppers 13 follows the tangled lives of a group of primarily chicano characters, from their teenage years in the early days of the California punk scene to the present day. Hoppers, or Huerta, is a fictional city based on the Hernandezes' home town of Oxnard, California. Two memorable members of Jaime's cast are Margarita "Maggie" Luisa Chascarrillo and Esperanza "Hopey" Leticia Glass, whose on-again, off-again romance is a focus for many Hoppers 13 storylines. The series is also often called Locas (Spanish for "crazy women") because of the many quirky female characters depicted. The original runs of Palomar and Locas have each been collected in recent one-volume editions by Fantagraphics (see Palomar (graphic novel)), although not all of the stories involving "Locas" and "Palomar" characters are contained in these collections. The original fifty-issue Love and Rockets Volume One has also been reprinted in its entirety in both a fifteen-volume paperback library, and more recently a seven-volume mass-market paperback series by Fantagraphics. In addition, several hardcovers collect edited versions of the series tales. Many attempts have been made to make L&R into a movie, or series of movies. The movie rights had been held up in litigation for over 15 years. Gilbert Hernandez publicly announced in Toronto, Ontario in May 2013 that a deal had been struck to make a movie out of his "Palomar" story-line and that he was currently writing the script.

Characters

Jaime

Gilbert

Landmark stories

This list provides an example of the types of stories that helped Love and Rockets gain critical acclaim.

Jaime

Gilbert

Graphic novels and collections

Main series

All published at Fantagraphics: Fantagraphics stopped numbering the series after 24.

Fritz B-Movies spin-offs

The following volumes by Gilbert Hernandez, under the collective title Fritz B-Movies, depict the filmography of B movie actress Fritz Martinez, Luba's youngest sister. Some of them have been prepublished in the magazine, but the majority appeared directly in book form.

Omnibus editions

Volume 1 was re-released in smaller "omnibus" style trade paperbacks. Starting in 2010, volume 2's stories began getting re-releases as well. In 2018, the New Stories began being collected among the "omnibus" paperbacks.

Hardcovers

Edited segments of both the Palomar and the Maggie stories are available in hardcover format.

New stories

The series continues in annual trade paperbacks, entitled Love & Rockets: New Stories. To date, eight exist: In 2012, Jaime Hernandez's individual stories from the first two volumes of New Stories were collected into a single volume, entitled God and Science: Return of the Ti-Girls, which also included about 30 new pages of comics. In 2014, Jaime Hernandez's stories from volumes 3 and 4 of New Stories were collected into a single volume entitled The Love Bunglers.

Volume IV

In 2016, Fantagraphics began releasing Volume IV of Love and Rockets.