Cracked Lenses: Love and Rockets New Stories #6

If Love & Rockets New Stories #5 saw Gilbert & Jaime Hernandez retrenching as they built storylines around new characters, then #6 is the first powerful realization of that idea. Both brothers often talk about certain characters and following them around to see what they'll do, to see if they can figure them out. Both talk about certain characters as unknowable for a variety of reasons; loose cannon Hopey has always been Jaime's unknowable character, while Gilbert has enjoyed writing Fritz for the opposite reason, that she has no real agency of her own and thus can fit any number of ideas or storylines. In Gilbert's cracked-lens return to Palomar, his new central figure is Killer, the daughter of Guadalupe and granddaughter of Luba. After last issue's hilarious interpolation of a film about Palomar starring Fritz with Killer meeting everyone for the first time, this issue delves into Killer trying to figure what she wants to do with her life. In particular, she wonders if she should give up being an actress.

After last issue's splashy stories, this issue is a bit more low-key with regard to Killer and her story, preferring to lay some narrative pipe and give the characters a bit of room to breathe and interact. The essential narrative arc to be found here is whether or not Killer is pregnant, a story that's fanned by media interest and that excites her father, Hector. When he learns this is not the case, there's a devastating scene where he cuts her down and she walks away. Killer, the "Sad Girl", who inspires story titles like "Willow, Weep No More" is perhaps the most stoic of all Hernandez's characters, rarely betraying any signs of negative emotion. She's guarded but not impossibly so, like Luba (or Maria, for that matter). She's flexible but is learning to exert agency in this storyline, unlike Fritz. Gilbert also drops a lot of other familial tidbits in this story as a way of connecting the toxic communication styles that plagued Killer's family for years. We see Maria (her great-grandmother) expressing guilt about giving away Luba, then denying her existence, then in a flashback where they cross paths without knowing it in America. This is connected with footage from the Maria M. movie popping up, something which means little to Luba (who hardened herself against the existence of her mother years earlier) but which endlessly fascinates Killer. We also see flashbacks to Fritz trying to curry her mother's favor with regard to the film, with an offer to appear in it even as Fritz plays her. Killer represents a chance to do things differently in this family saga, to be someone who manages to dodge the same kinds of tragedies and horrors that her older relatives endured. Guadalupe was always the most stable and happiest of Luba's children, and Killer represents a child who has her mother's stable nature but who is still teetering on the edge of dealing with fame. The end of the book, where she encounters Doralis' ghost and suddenly gets the urge to act again, has the potential to set some interesting stories in motion.

It's amazing to see how Gilbert continues to approach this family in new ways to get at different emotions and experiences. Luba may now just be a sideline character and Fritz relegated to cameos and appearances in her "films" (the story where she appears as a furry monster and fights a magic man in boots was hilarious, disgusting and profane in all the best ways), but the sheer weight of their history can be felt on every page. Even for a new reader, their presence becomes important thanks to flashbacks, even though the story could be followed fairly easily as a continuation of the previous issue. The Palomar characters and setting seem effortless for Gilbert to draw, which is why the untitled story was so much fun--the reader got to see him really cut loose and get nasty. The tie-ins between this story and the Maria M. standalone "movie" book were also interesting, as this issue is a kind of commentary on both how the characters view the "films" but also Gilbert's reaction to reader and critical commentary on that work. In a sense, he's giving the readers what they want by going back to Palomar, but he's doing it in a sneaky way, one where he wants the reader to know that they're not going to get exactly what they think they want.

In L&R New Stories #5, Jaime introduced Tonta as his new tentpole character. This teen is a sort of "Bizarro Maggie" in that she shares much of Maggie's awkwardness and desire to be part of a scene but she has far less of Maggie's charm or good looks. Jaime spent the issue slowly exploring her world, one that finds her with her own version of Rand Race (a punk rocker named Eric), except that the crush is pretty much unrequited. If Tonta has a Hopey, it's Gretchen "the Gorgon", a girl from school who's as weird and wired as Hopey, only with a distorted, ugly face. Gretchen clearly has a crush on Tonta, a fact lost on the endlessly dense girl. Indeed, she embraces her nickname (which means "dummy" or "stupid" in Spanish), preferring it her given name of Anoush, which means "sweetness". Jaime sets her up as a punk rock wannabe, but also displays an enormous amount of affection toward this character, whom he's clearly trying to get to know. It is telling, however, that Jaime doesn't use thought balloons for any of his characters in this issue with the exception of one returning character. Traditionally, Maggie always got thought balloons but Hopey never did, as she was an impenetrable character for Jaime. Whereas Maggie was someone that he "knew", and it delighted him to put her in different kinds of situations.

Where that leaves Tonta is a good question, one that I'm not sure Jaime himself is sure of at the moment. We're seeing "Bizarro Maggie's" story play out, but this time, we don't know everything she's thinking. Of course, the way that Tonta blabs out her thoughts and feelings, one wonders what she does keep inside. Hernandez connected her to two old characters: Vivian, the "Frogmouth", is her half-sister. Angel of Tarzana is her high school P.E. teacher. Angel knows Tonta because she knows Vivian, and there are all sorts of hilarious scenes that erupt because of that connection, like Vivian attacking Angel from behind when she's on the field during class. Tonta and her friends (including Gomez, who's sort of Daffy-like in her innocence) are fascinated by their teacher, who wants to bring as many new sports as possible to her students. When they are summoned to a mysterious location for what turns out to be a Luchadora wrestling match, it's all thanks to Gretchen, who knows that their teacher is wrestling as "The Angel of Assassins". This is the most light-hearted part of the book, a throwback to those wrestling comics that Jaime used to do so well.

All of this is window dressing, essentially, fun incidental stuff to get lost in as a means of getting to know the characters. What seemed like somewhat aimless character work in #5 is quickly established in the serial "Crimen" as an especially brutal and heartbreaking story. When Tonta comes home from a day's shenanigans, she's told that her step-father has been killed by a burglar. We are then introduced to Violet and reintroduced to Ishmael, a seeming thug who worked at a country club. When Jaime reveals that Ish is in fact Vivian's twin brother and that they are all half-brothers and sisters (along with Tonta, Muneca and baby Alby), it's a surprise. What is a shock is Violet's assertion that their mother had Tonta's step-father killed, and that she had accused her mother years earlier of killing off her father. This brutal story of family politics, lies and betrayals seamlessly blends the harder edge Jaime has brought to his stories of late along with the lighthearted, character-based work that's been there as well.

Even as the children scheme to send their mother to children (with Tonta being the last to know everything, including the fact that she even had a brother), Jaime manages to inject humor into the grimmest of proceedings. That's because the drama all takes place off-panel, allowing him to focus tightly on the character interactions of the siblings. Thanks to the fact that Vivian is a total loose cannon who's as likely to punch her sister Violet in the mouth as look at her, Jaime has a built-in monkey wrench and live wire for his stories in a character who can't help but liven up any story she appears in. At the same time, he adds depth and even pathos to this brute of a character while subtly crafting a story where she is manipulated by others from the very start. What's remarkable about Jaime's stories in these two issues is the way that he's able to tie the events of this story (which of course end in disaster for the children as they are utterly outmatched in court and intimidated out of court) back into the funny, quotidian adventures of Tonta. Dyeing her hair black and attending a new school, she attends a concert by the band containing her object of affection, a band that's now become popular. When he starts singing a song called "Black Widow", which she realizes is about her mother, she's experienced the ultimate betrayal. It's a heartbreaking way to end the issue, one whose final scene is Tonta as a baby at the swimming hole that's a big part of this story, with her siblings showing her affection even as her older brother (at age 13) has stopped living with his mother because of what he knew she did. Indeed, the family politics surrounding Tonta make Maggie's family look stable and loving by comparison.

Jaime hits the Hank Ketcham hammer hard in this issue with his character design, the overall looseness of the characters, and the slightly goofy and grotesque characteristics this particular cast has. Violet's slightly hard-boiled appearance betrays her as someone who's done a lot of hard living. Ish and Vivi are both impossibly attractive in their own way. Tonta's snaggletooth overbite, her messy hair, her poor posture and overall schlubbiness are simply fantastic; she's a self-described loner who is desperate for company and love. Gomez' willowy frame, Angel's sturdy and powerful body and Gretchen's remarkable grace all inject tremendous amounts of personality into these characters before they speak a single word. As great a draftsman as Jaime Hernandez is, he's a far greater cartoonist. Gesture, body language, minute facial expressions and the ways people interact with each other in space and in terms of panel-to-panel transitions are his real strengths as a cartoonist. Nailing these small details allows him to go "big" with emotions and the occasional exaggerated expression (especially from Tonta, who's always pulling faces) with no dissonance whatsoever, Each chapter of "Crimen" is only two pages long, in a 2x4 panel grid and the first panel blacked out with white title text. This is where things get heavy. The other stories have freer grids, befitting the lighter touch of those stories. Beyond the powerful emotional content and humor in this issue, Jaime's comics are master classes in how to structure a loosely-serialized set of short stories.

Fairy Tale Comics

Following up the success of Nursery Rhyme Comics, First Second is aiming another book at younger readers. The formula, once again was to include a mixture of cartoonists and illustrators to adapt classic fairy tales. The results were mixed, and I found that the less successful comics were by the illustrators or cartoonists with whom I was not familiar. While the possibility of being previously biased toward cartoonists whose work I admire is certainly in play, I like to read anthologies precisely because it gives me an opportunity to discover new artists.

Editor Chris Duffy was quite smart about choosing the alt-comics cartoonists for this volume. Nearly all of them had at least some experience with doing all-ages stuff. Both Gilbert and Jaime Hernandez had experienced doing this, especially Gilbert, and it shows in their stories here. Beto's "Hansel and Gretel" is appropriately grisly and weird for a cartoonist who's currently exploring pulp/exploitation comics. Jaime's "Snow White" is appropriate because he's so good at drawing women, though it does inadvertently point out the problem that this story has an astoundingly passive heroine. Stuff just happens to her and she happens to get lucky in the end.

Vanessa Davis' "Puss In Boots" was one of the best stories in the whole book. Her painterly style combined with her strong cartooning fundamentals makes this a perfect hybrid piece for children, as it combines elements of comics and traditional children's illustration.  I can't imagine an artist more suited to do an original Toon Book than Davis, and I hope she gets a crack at that in the future. Luke Pearson's "The Boy Who Drew Cats" is done very much in his Hilda style, down to the muted color palette, thin lines and simple but solid character design. It's a story that's at once cute, funny and frightening. "Rabbit Will Not Help" (based on "Bre'r Rabbit") by Joe Lambert is another story perfectly suited for the artist, as he's great at drawing anthropomorphic animals. Using pages packed with as many fifteen panels on them in rows of three, Lambert crams a lot of detail into a small space, establishing a particular kind of rhythm as the story sets up and repeats a certain kind of gag again and again. Breaking that rhythm and establishing the final punchline (slightly altered from the original story but still the same basic idea of saying, "Oh no, please don't make me do something I really want you to do!") allows Lambert to unpack his panels just a bit.

Other highlights include Graham Annable's "Goldilocks", which is told without words and with a deadpan character that heightens its humor, as well as Jillian Tamaki's "Baba Yaga", which eschews the grid entirely to create an open page with two or three images slowly transitioning into each other. Craig Thompson's story about a young king demanding constant storytelling plays to his strengths as an artist who loves to add a lot of detail and decorative elements to his comics. David Mazzucchelli's story about a boy who couldn't shudder was clever but looked a bit on the dull and flat side. Raina Telgemeier's "Rapunzel" was solid as per usual but lacked the distinctive energy and pacing of her own comics. Most of the other stories didn't really make much of an impact on me as a reader one way or another, but Gigi D.G.'s version of "Little Red Riding Hood" was the only story that I thought went out of its way to look twee, like it was trying too hard to look like a story for children. Overall, I thought giving the cartoonists space to really flesh stories out made for a lot of successful results, and even most of the more uneven or forgettable stories were at the very least pleasant. I'll be curious to see if First Second tries to continue to market books to younger readers in the same vein.

Autoptic and Everything Before in Minneapolis

From Friday 8/16 to Sunday 8/18, Minneapolis was the alt-comics capital of the US. Combining the resources of the Minneapolis College of Art and Design (MCAD), the minds behind PFC and the organizing committee behind Autoptic, comics fans were treated with a true comics arts festival. The focus was on guest of honor Jaime Hernandez, who gave a talk on Friday at MCAD in support of the closing of his exhibit in the MCAD gallery. However, collaboration was the theme of the weekend, as a week's worth of collaborations between North American and European artists was on display on Saturday. All of these artists attended the inaugural Autoptic show. Let's take a closer look at each event.

1. Jaime Hernandez exhibit and talk at MCAD. Friday night was the closing of the Zak Sally-curated exhibition of Jaime Hernandez' work, with the artist himself giving a talk in a packed auditorium. I had an opportunity to go through the show slowly before the crowds arrived. While I've never been a big proponent of comics in galleries, I thought Sally did a fine job in giving interested parties a good reason to study the show closely. Before one entered the main exhibition room, there was a wall dedicated to media coverage about "Los Bros" as well as posters and other ephemera. Sally sensibly arranged the art to reflect Hernandez's evolution as an artist over the years, dividing it into a variety of eras. He was careful to select a few stories here and there and display several pages in sequence, a decision that helped preserve the sequential nature of the work. There were also displays of the original, self-published Love and Rockets #1 and dozens of issues and collections under glass.

The top two pages were cut up and combined into the bottom page for "Spring 1982".

Hernandez is known as one of the greatest comics draftsmen in the world, so getting to see original art was fascinating. In the early days, he actually used quite a bit of whiteout. In the pages I saw from the recent story "The Love Bunglers", there was almost none. The real discovery of this exhibit is that Hernandez had a few out-take pages from several stories, including the only extant original art from "Flies On The Ceiling" (the originals were "lost" after being displayed in a gallery). Another outtake from "Jerusalem Crickets" was thrown out because it depicts Hopey writing a letter to Maggie while she's touring; Jaime realized that Hopey simply wasn't the kind of person who writes letters and scrapped the idea. Other pages were simply abandoned after a panel or two. It was also interesting to see him draw a couple of pages and later cannibalize them, combining them into a single page as he switched around or threw away panels. Also on display were a few pages from his scripts, which he continues to write on yellow legal pads. He used to throw them away until someone urged him to keep them. He told me he now has a huge stack of them and doesn't know what to do with them. I suggested he donate them to one of the many universities now collecting comics-related work. He said he's thought about that, but that he's also thought about selling them (he's selling some of his art now).

Outtake from "Jerusalem Crickets".

Stories highlighted in the exhibition include the aforementioned, "Spring 1982", "Home School"; and "The Death of Speedy"; Sally hit the highlights hard. At the end of the exhibition, there were two couches and a bookshelf with various volumes of L&R for readers to peruse. The crowd then streamed into the building's big auditorium on the campus of MCAD. It was standing room only in the hall, with a video feed being piped into the overflow room next door. Sally interviewed Hernandez in his heartfelt, passionate style, and it was clear that the artists had established a clear connection in working together on this project. As Sally enthused later, Hernandez indeed told stories he hadn't heard before. A big focus was on the role of his family in becoming a cartoonist. Jaime talked at length about his mother, who used to collect comics in the 40s and 50s but had to hide them from her own mother. He talked about drawing with his brothers one day, and his mom brought out a stack of drawings she had made of various comic book and comic strip characters. He and his brothers were awed by the fact that she had done this and it became something very cool to them.

The author in the reading section of the exhibition.

He noted that he and his brothers had simply always drawn comics. "It was just what we did. Get up, eat breakfast, draw comics". It was a cheap way to get a bunch of little kids to quiet down for a while. His older brothers did it, so he had to do it too. Sally made a joke about wanting to have introduced the Crumb brothers to the Hernandez brothers. I ran with that idea and asked Jaime about the hierarchy in the family, noting that Charles Crumb was the comics boss of the family and the other two brothers followed along. I wondered if he was ever told to draw a certain way, or if he was told he was doing something wrong. Jaime replied that it was never like that. Instead, it was just a constant sense of excitement from his brothers, but especially Gilbert:. "Hey, let's draw!" There were suggestions about fun things they could draw together but never orders.

An outtake from "Flies on the Ceiling".

Jaime said that during the academic year, comics were frequently forbidden until they got their grades up. When summer rolled around, his mom would take out a huge bag of Archies, Dells, Gold Keys, etc. (Mario's Marvel collection was considered to be "the good stuff" and off-limits for rough re-readings.) Those frequent re-readings refined Jaime's eye and made him realize what excited him. He remembered an issue of Dennis The Menace (most likely drawn by Al Wiseman) where Dennis and Joey walk down a street, having a conversation. This excited young Jaime for reasons he didn't understand, but he started to love the scenes in super-hero comics were they were in civilian clothes instead of the fight scenes. That launched him on his way.

Zak Sally and Jaime Hernandez. Photo by June Julien Morrisey.

There were any number of other interesting anecdotes as Sally and Hernandez got to the heart of how comics and music were meaningful to them. One common theme to Hernandez talking about his own comics is authenticity; he wants to depict things accurately and honestly. That extends to growing up Mexican-American in Texas and California, to the punk scene in early 80s Los Angeles, to how women think and act, to writing gay and lesbian characters. When I mentioned to him that a mutual cartoonist friend was working as an apartment manager in LA like Maggie, he said that he had run into her and she had told him that story. His main concern: "Did I get it right?" The other interesting theme that emerged about him over the weekend is how important it is to him to be part of the current comics scene. There was a long period where "the phones stopped ringing" and he and Gilbert stopped being hot cartoonists. The show and the reception he got the entire weekend spoke to just how important he is to young fans and cartoonists alike.

2. PFC Exhibition. Coinciding with the Jaime Hernandez show and the Autoptic festival was Pierre Feuille Ciseaux #4, or "Rock Paper Scissors". Organized by the ebullient June Julien Misserey and brought to the US by way of Zak Sally's suggestion, this was a weeklong experimental comics camp that brought together artists from North America and Europe. PFC is all about constraint comics, wherein artists are asked to draw stories given time limits and particular limitations. In one "game", an artist would draw a panel. The next artist would continue the story by drawing a panel above that panel, to the right of the panel and under that panel. The next artist would have to draw five panels, and so on, all the while keeping up the narrative. Another game saw the artists have to draw themselves captured by Wonder Woman's lasso and forced to tell the truth about something. Another game, called "Fuck This Thing" (printed as a free mini) forced each artist to draw the the thing they hated drawing the most until they got sick of it; they got to write "Fuck drawing thing x" as a sort of reward.

The roster of artists included Kevin Huizenga, John Porcellino, Eleanor Davis, Lisa Hanawalt, Genevieve Castree, Jim Rugg, Anders Nilsen, Lilli Carre', Marc Bell, and Tom Kaczynski from the US and Canada. Representing France and Belgium were J.C. Menu, Misserey, David Libens, Max de Radigues, Benoit Pretesille, Domitille Collardey, Eugene Riousse, Sandrine Martin, and Pierre Ferrero. All of these cartoonists have reached their mature style, but all of them are still in their primes. There was a careful balance of styles, from naturalistic to cartoony to minimalist. The artists also collaborated with a group of MCAD students on a number of projects, and the students came up with their own games as well. Something remarkable about this assemblage is that even by Saturday, the last day of PFC, the artists still couldn't stop drawing. A number of professional cartoonists sat in with those stopping by for a public zine/mini making workshop. Lisa Hanawalt and Eleanor Davis made a last-second mini for Autoptic. When I stopped by the main studio on Saturday, the artists were hanging around, helping each spot blacks and make beautiful, accordion-style minicomics.

The Saturday Comics Workshop at MCAD. The author's wife is in the lower left-hand corner. Photo taken from PFC website (presumably by June Misserey).

In speaking to the participating artists, most of them were apprehensive to begin the week. The joke of the situation was that every artist felt like they weren't as good as their neighbor--they couldn't draw as well or as seemingly effortlessly as everyone else. That was true from John Porcellino to Jim Rugg, representing a beautiful and minimalist style to a highly elaborate, detailed line, respectively. Critic Xavier Guilbert  discussed how being forced to work with another cartoonist, especially a stranger, was a way of breaking the ice for you. You each had a project to do and had to find solutions together, which naturally led to talking about everything else. Menu noted that artists from both Europe and North America not only have drawing in common, but the common language of storytelling. Even someone like Marc Bell, who works in a kind of dream logic, is working in that common language of narrative. Being forced to engage in these games forced the artists to work in their most spontaneous and natural styles, putting down their purest line before doubt and the need to clean up lines or the urge to choke a drawing to death took over.

The assignment board for "Break Something".

The ostensible goal of the week was to create a screenprinted comic. Each artist was asked to pick a character from a list. A North American artist was randomly paired up with a European artist (in most cases), combining their two characters with the theme "Break Something".  The screenprinting studio Aesthetic Apparatus printed them and they were cut on site as the artists pitched in with folding and cutting. There are a lot of great collaborations, but the Kevin Huizenga ("The Devil") and Sandrine Martin ("God") was the best, as God was a cartoonist and the Devil kept burning up his work. I also quite enjoyed Eleanor Davis & Max de Radigues doing a Soldier and a Corpse. All of the cartoonists used the sort of rich color screen that popped when screenprinted on thick paper stock.

Another highlight of the day was getting a guided tour to the students' exhibition of their PFC challenges by Barb Schulz, a professor in the comics program at MCAD (I should note that Sally is also a professor there). She talked a bit about particular students and the curriculum for undergraduates. MCAD has offered cartooning as a major since 1997 and they're now up to fifty or so cartooning majors in a school that has about 700 undergraduates. A number of the cartoonists wound up tabling at Autoptic. Mandie Brasington was one interesting artist who runs the Dead Cartoonist's Society, which published an anthology. Dawson Walker is a senior who has serious cartooning chops. Frosh Rosemary Vallero-O'Connell's cartoons for PFC really stood out; despite her lack of publishing experience, it's clear that she has real talent and ambition. I'll have a more detailed MCAD artist report for my High-Low column over at tcj.com soon, once I plow through the pile of minis I got from the cartoonists who tabled at Autoptic.

L to R: Genevieve Castree, Zak Sally, John Porcellino, Jaime Hernandez, Max de Radigues. Photo by June Julien Misserey.

There was an interesting lightness I observed in the PFC artists as I saw them working. Combining the social aspects of a convention with an environment that demanded actual productivity led to work that was mostly light-hearted and even crude in nature, but there was also a lot of cleverness and truth-telling to be found in the PFC exhibition. The sheer amount of comics they produced was staggering. Even Jaime Hernandez got into the act on Friday night, drawing a couple of images for a Nancy animation and getting in on a couple of games. Lisa Hanawalt naturally started a comic involving a woman's ass, knowing that Jaime was taking part and knowing that he'd "knock it out of the park" when he got to it. (Needless to say, he did.) Porcellino and Misserey both described the week as one of the best of their lives. I imagine a number of the other artists concurred. The lingering memory I'll carry of the day is Porcellino flitting from table to table and room to room, cracking jokes, spotting blacks and whistling Led Zeppelin's "Houses of the Holy".

I'll be curious to see what the future of PFC might be. The last event in France had all sorts of logistical problems, and there was talk that that might have been the last one. Bringing it to the US was a logical move that obviously bore great fruit. I could see the event moving to England for a year, given the now-high concentration of interesting cartoonists there. I could also see it coming back to the US. The Center for Cartoon Studies would be a logical home. SCAD in Savannah might work as well, or perhaps Columbia College in Chicago (Ivan Brunetti would be a total natural in this scenario!). Those institutions might have the money to make this possible. A longshot but interesting possibility might be SAW in Gainesville, which would be fitting because Tom Hart is a longtime OuBaPo participant. This is a worthwhile experiment that foments enthusiasm and productivity, and I hope to see it continue on an annual basis.

The funkiness of the Aria Building.

3. Autoptic. The show itself was a one-day affair held at the Aria Building, a renovated former warehouse and theater that's now an all-purpose event space. Others have raved about the space for the purposes of this show and I have to agree. The exposed brick, the quirky accents and the airy feel of the place reminded me a bit of the Puck Building in the MOCCA festival's early days. The fact that the show was free combined with a sunny day meant a number of curious passers-by came to take a look, given that the building is in a walkable part of downtown near the Mississippi River. The organizers of the show smartly had a hot dog stand and a food truck set up outside the show, and there were raves about both. There was clearly a great deal of thought that went into any number of decisions related to the show, even as they ran into some last-minute snafus.For example, the programming for the show was supposed to be at Alliance Francaise next door, but there was a mix-up in scheduling on their part that froze out Autoptic after 4pm. So the organizers quickly made a room in the back of Aria into a makeshift programming area. This had mixed results, as the microphones were all hand-held and the ambient noise out in the hall muffled a number of panel members. Luckily, the room was small enough that most information got across.

The show itself was just the right size for a one-day event, with just over a hundred exhibitors. Some of them were printmakers, local radio stations and local independent music labels. A few artists noted that prints seemed to be the biggest sellers in the room. For the most part, the room was still dominated by cartoonists. What I found interesting about the character of this show was that it drew a number of west coast cartoonists who I'd never met who were able to afford a ticket to Minneapolis (and in the case of some, drive there). This show was also a chance for the thriving Minneapolis comics scene to make itself known, especially students and graduates of MCAD. Of course, the American and French PFC artists also tabled at this show and made a big splash. West coast artists on hand included Elijah Brubaker, Rusty Jordan, David King, Greg Means, Tom Neely, and Virginia Paine. There were a number of Chicago artists who made the short trip up, including Sam Sharpe, Laura Park, Keiler Roberts and Marnie Galloway. The locals filled out many of the other spots, including Anna Bongiovanni, Kevin Cannon, Zander Cannon, JP Coovert, Max Mose, Will Dinski, 2D Cloud, Tom Kaczynski, and MCAD students and alumni like Dawson Walker, Leigh Luna, Mandie Brasington, Danielle Chenette, Alexis Cooke, Amara Leipzig, Jay Ragorshek and many others. There were any number of other familiar faces and micropublishers, but seeing that local color in a juried show gave the show an unusually high level of overall quality.

The Dead Cartoonist Society table from MCAD. L to R: Jen Silverman, Joel McKeen, Kitty Berry

Sales ranged from low to solid. John Porcellino said he did quite well and sold a lot of comics to non-comics readers who were curious, including plenty of his own King Cat series. Annie Koyama also reported good sales despite having nothing new for the show. Having Jaime Hernandez on hand certainly helped Fantagraphics (repped by the tireless Jen Vaughn) move a decent number of books. The total attendance for the day neared 1500, which is about what the defunct Minneapolis Indie Expo (MIX) did in its second year. The low sales were perhaps not surprising give the fact that the show drew in lots of local fans who weren't necessarily sophisticated comics readers. However, even a publisher like Secret Acres, which pretty much took a bath at the show, said that they want to come back if possible when the show is held again in two years because of the show's many other attractive aspects.

I had a strong hand in programming the show's panels after volunteering in the early going. Bill Kartalopoulos suggested doing a Q&A with Menu. I didn't get a chance to see it, but Bill said that the Alliance Francaise had a bottle of white wine on the table and the two of them drained it over the course of an hour, leading to a very relaxed panel. I put together the "Impact and Future of Micropublishing" panel and handed it over to the very capable hands of local writer Greg Hunter, who was also a big help in the A/V department during one of my panels. That panel included Justin Skarhus (2D Cloud), Virginia Paine (Sparkplug), Kartalopoulos (Rebus Books), and Barry Matthews (Secret Acres). Zak Sally moderated a panel on "Independent Culture" that included Koyama, a printmaker and a indy record label producer, while Isaac Cates' "Animals as People" panel had Lisa Hanawalt, Anders Nilsen and Sally.

L to R: Max Mose, Anna Bongiovanni, Eamon Espey, Eleanor Davis.

I moderated two panels. The first, "The Dark Roots of Myth" took an unexpected and personal turn in the early going. Featuring Eleanor Davis, Caitlin Skaalrud, Eamon Espey, Max Mose and Anna Bongiovanni, each artist noted that their frequently dark and fictional comics are rooted in autobiographical concerns. For example, Davis said that she is every one of the characters in her stories, and so conflicts presented are really internal conflicts. Espey said that some of his violent, meat-grinding imagery reflects an unpleasant job he was working at the time. Skaalrud and Bongiovanni both said that comics are a way of working through their own personal issues without having to talk about it at a conscious level. Bongiovanni said that she depicts motherhood and babies in the unusual way that she does as a way of working through her own childhood trauma. Mose works through political issues that burn at him (like the Louisiana oil spill) using monsters and horror so as not to be didactic. All of them mentioned using primal imagery as something direct and easy to understand by a reader and easy to translate as a creator.

L to R: Eleanor Davis, Caitlin Skaalrud, the author.

The second panel was a conversation with Jaime Hernandez and Lisa Hanawalt. I was well-prepared for my first panel, but I was mostly winging it here, counting on Lisa to make Jaime laugh for an hour. This is more or less what happened, to my great delight. I had a few questions prepped for them, mostly along the lines of when they first encountered the other's work, what you saw in their work that you wish you could do, etc. Right before the panel, Lisa brought Domitille Collardey up to the panel to participate, to my great delight. Jaime recalled meeting Lisa in a van at Comicon in San Diego, getting a ride with Matt Groening and Lisa to some location. He remembered being thrilled to actually hang out with some of the younger cartoonists. Then he said that he signed up as "an old man" on twitter, stalking his favorite young cartoonists. Domitille said that one of her crowning achievements in life was getting Jaime to favorite a fart joke that she made, but he replied that he favorites all fart jokes on twitter.

 L to R: Domitille Collardey, Lisa Hanawalt, Jaime Hernandez, the author.

The panel was an interesting mix of frivolity and sincerity. After taking up about half the panel with my questions (mostly of the explanatory nature mentioned earlier), I turned it over to Lisa, who had told me she had taken some notes during Jaime's lecture on Friday night. Jaime talked a bit about how embarrassing but true it is that he has a crush on a number of his characters, but especially Maggie, because he "knows" her best. Paradoxically, he puts her through the emotional wringer because he's interested in seeing her display a range of emotions in different situations, but he exclaimed that when he does it, he wants to yell, "I'm with you, Maggie!" He also revealed a couple of simple narrative tricks that were head-slappingly obvious when he talked about them but were things that I had never noticed. Because he knows Maggie, we the reader get full access to her thoughts and feelings, but from the point of view of an outsider. Hopey is a character who is a little more unknowable, and so the reader never gets to see her thought balloons. Ray is a sort of reader substitute so his comics feature first-person narration in captions.

The artists also talked about process, with both Lisa and Domitille both being relieved to hear that Jaime encounters problems he sometimes can't fix when trying to tell a story. Jaime mentioned putting some stories in a drawer and coming back a few months later to see if the problems magically worked themselves out. If not, back in the drawer they go. Lisa described her version of this process as putting her pages in a drawer in order to "let them think about what they did." Lisa and Domitille also talked a bit about Pizza Island, their old studio were all the artists were women, which received some funny publicity as a result. I noted that Pizza Island is the sort of concept that Jaime would have done twenty years ago.

At one point, Jaime suggested that Lisa aim some of the questions meant for him over to Domitille. On cue, Lisa said, "So Domitille, what was it like to grow up as a Mexican-American?" Jaime ended the panel by saying that he was happy to do it to tell the artists how much of a crush he had on their work and to let them know it. Lisa elaborated on a point I made toward the end, in that Jaime is drawing packed rooms and has a lot of younger fans: "Deal with it!"

The Autoptic organizers spelling out "Thanks!!" at the end of the show.

Regarding Autoptic as a whole: as others have noted, the lighting was too low in some parts of the room, there was no easy access to an ATM, and while the crowd was decent, many of them weren't interested in buying comics. Still, there was a tremendous amount of goodwill in the crowd and affection toward the organizers and volunteers (mostly MCAD students) who tried to solve problems and offer help as quickly as they could. Like the city of Minneapolis itself, the home team wanted the out-of-towners to have a great time and love their city and scene as much as they did. The show and the city certainly made a believer out of me.

Critic Xavier Guilbert and the author, both in black, at the kick-off party on Friday night. Photo by June Julien Misserey.

4. The Social Scene. I generally tend not to focus on this sort of thing very much in my convention reports, because it's not generally relevant to the show, and no one really cares unless you were there. That said, the kick-off party, held at the CO Exhibitions building that was housing an Anders Nilsen-curated exhibit of the PFC artists, featured cheap PBR and a number of interesting musical/performance art pieces. This is when guests of the show started showing up en masse, and the place was packed and full of nervous energy. After Autoptic, there was an afterparty at a restaurant/bar called the Red Stag Supper Club. While the ambiance and weather were both absolutely perfect, the restaurant was a bit overwhelmed by the crowds of cartoonists and service was spotty as a result. When the hour grew later, the place emptied out of non-cartoonists patrons and a great time was had by all. The evening benefited from the general good vibes of the show, as crowds ebbed and flowed together and artists of multiple generations entertained each other. Goodbyes were long and lingering, and the conversations ranged from serious discussions of art to fall-down laughing anecdotes. I know of at least one editor who got a cartoonist to quickly sign on to his anthology as a result of their conversation. Even though some cartoonists and publishers didn't make a lot of money, the low-key vibe and relatively small size of the show (the juried guest list was top notch) made for an intimate and pleasant weekend for all and struck a powerful claim for the Minneapolis comics scene as one of the most exciting in North America.

Special thanks to the ever-amazing Laura Jent-Clough for taking photographs (all photos taken by her unless otherwise credited). and to Annie Koyama for being Annie Koyama.

The New Normal: Love and Rockets New Stories #5

Before I begin my review of the new issue of Love and Rockets, here are links to my reviews of L&R New Stories #1, #2, #3 (as part of a best of the year column) and #4 Anyone who's read these four issues knows that Jaime Hernandez just concluded a highly dramatic and emotional storyline about family, betrayals, trauma and finding one's center in the nick of time. Gilbert has been exploring his interesting in pulp storytelling as framed through his comics adaptations of the "films" that star long-running character Fritz. Along the way, he's slowly been exploring Killer, the daughter of Guadalupe and granddaughter of Luba and Heraclio, several more of his bedrock characters. For both artists, this issue represents a sort of retreat, retrenching and reseeding of storylines.

Let's start with Gilbert. After more or less leaving behind Palomar stories at the conclusion of volume 1 of Love and Rockets (with some flashback series such as his Ignatz line stories and the occasional very brief look-in as exceptions), it looks like Gilbert is returning to his old stomping grounds. However, there's a twist. It's not just that everyone's older, but rather that the story is being told through the innocent but not naive eyes of Killer, whose resemblance to Luba is not accidental. "Somewhere Outside the U.S. Border" reintroduces us to Chelo, the guardian and sheriff of Palomar, and Vicente, the scarred man whom Chelo watched over his entire life. "And here we go all over again", says Chelo, bemusedly remarking on Killer's potential to wreak havoc. "Proof That The Devil Loves You" is the central narrative for Beto in this issue, and it's a stunner. He combines his fascination with lurid pulp with Palomar to create perhaps the most meta story since Dan Clowes' story "Velvet Glove: The Movie".

Interspersing Killer's adventures exploring Palomar after coming from America with a movie starring Fritz as a character who's half-Luba and half-Tonatzin, Hernandez not only hilariously pokes fun at his own comic but also builds a real narrative as we understand why the movie is vicious to a couple of characters in particular. Fritz plays Bula, who carries around a "symbolic screwdriver" (I laughed out loud at that one) and flails about town trying to establish her own identity in the most shallow way possible. The actress who plays the Chelo character is depicted as being cruel and capricious to the Pipo stand-in, which is no surprise considering that the movie was produced  Pipo. Pipo had long-standing feuds with Chelo and Luba, so this is her little way of getting payback (Encouraging Chelo to watch the movie sometime was a particularly bitchy thing for her to say). Meanwhile, Killer is entranced by Palomar, downplaying the "haunted" nature of the town and the hatred "her tia" (I'm presuming Maricela, given her shared loathing of her mother Luba and Chelo) had in talking about the town. When Luba's original hammer falls from the Whispering Tree, Killer treks back to the US to give it to her grandmother, but she's wise enough to know where this story is going. In much the same way Fritz was the focus of L&R Volume 2, it's clear that Killer's journey is just beginning.

Is Gilbert simply repeating himself by going back to the Palomar well? I don't think so. Instead, he's using the cracked lens he's been training on pulp stories through Fritz and training it on an old target. Already, he's given the reader a taste of what his Palomar stories might have been like if he had been a different kind of storyteller (certainly, a less humane one). The Luba, Pipo and Chelo stand-ins all wind up dead while all thought of nuance is thrown to the winds. Unlike Beto's other pulp stories, which are similarly lurid in terms of violence and overall noir quality, Pipo's movie "Proof That That The Devil Loves You" is simple-minded to the point of silliness, a lampoon of the events that originally occurred. Gilbert quite noticeably never has heroes or villains in his stories, only characters whose flaws wind up hurting others to a greater or lesser degree, and the assignation of heroism and villainy in the movie story is what makes it so amusing. With the fun and games over, I'm curious to see whether Killer will wind up being an active protagonist like Luba in the Palomar stories or a passive one like Luba in "Poison River". Luba will clearly be her mirror both for the reader and the other characters, and it will be quite a feat for Gilbert to pull off the trick of creating a new story that treads on new ground while making Killer as memorable as her grandmother.

Jaime takes a slightly different tact in following up a story that could have easily wrapped up the entire series if he had so desired. He essentially puts Maggie and Ray on the shelf (they appear only briefly) and introduces a new character "Tonta" (Spanish for "dummy"), the half-sister of Vivian the Frogmouth. We jump back and forth in time with Tonta, who proves to be a sort of Bizarro Maggie. They're about the same age and liked the same kind of bands, only the frumpier Tonta never quite got her dream man, the singer Eric Lopez (sort of her version of Rand Race). Jaime clearly is going places with this character, spending a lot of time setting up her past and establishing mysteries that he will explore in the next few years but also putting her in the same setting as the modern L&R stories. The violent, dangerous world that the Frogmouth flirts with and that has been touched upon from afar by Jaime gets his full attention in "Crime Raiders International Mobsters and Executioners", a kitschy title that does indeed involve a gang and a potential assassination. The Frogmouth has been a fun character because she seems to show absolutely no regard for others and is essentially a thrill-seeking narcissist. However, despite her great looks, her repulsive personality essentially sets off everyone's bullshit detector instantly, leaving her constantly frustrated. We got to see that explored to comedic effect with her interactions with Ray and Maggie in Volume 2 of L&R, but here, we see that the game she plays sometimes has more serious consequences.

The most intriguing new character Jaime introduces is Gretchen, "the Gorgon". This is a character who appears in the flashback portion of Tonta's story, a teenaged girl with a profoundly ugly face who fully owns that aspect of her herself while generating all sorts of mystery. Tonta talks to her all the time but constantly hides that fact from her hipper friends. Like Gilbert saying "And here we go", Jaime's last line of her initial appearance is "It's going to be a hell of a summer." Going with a brand-new character instead of further fleshing out Angel of Tarzana is an interesting move. By extensively utilizing flashbacks, Jaime will get a chance to explore a cracked-lens version of Maggie as a teen (roughly the same age when L&R #1 debuted) as well as keeping her firmly ensconsced in the wider Locas storyline (though as an outsider looking in). Both brothers, after thirty years, are looking forward and looking back at the same time, revisiting characters on the verge of adulthood like in the earliest days of their comics (characters who were the same age as they were, essentially) while still spending time with characters who are now pushing fifty. There were no earth-shaking events depicted by either brother in this comic, but I'm guessing the next the next three volumes will explore (and explode) the groundwork laid in this issue.

A Tribute To Jaime Hernandez

 This weekend, I'm paying tribute to the 30th anniversary of Love & Rockets by publishing several long out-of-print reviews I did a few years back, in anticipation of my review of L&R New Stories #5. We conclude today with Jaime Hernandez.
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Maggie The Mechanic is Jaime Hernandez's first volume of the new Fantagraphics Love and Rockets collection, gathering all of the stories roughly before "The Death of Speedy Ortiz" storyline. Jaime wastes no time introducing us to Maggie & Hopey and immediately brings in a certain ambiguity as to their relationship: are they friends or lovers? That central tension would go on to inform the rest of the series; how Maggie and Hopey related to each other often drove entire storylines. Of course, Jaime told stories that mixed the punk rock scene with dinosaurs, futuristic technology, eccentric billionaires, international intrigue, jungle adventures and all sorts of other wackiness. It was a comics version of magical realism, one that he would tone down greatly as the series evolved. Eventually, such trappings disappeared almost entirely and Jaime's stories revolved around the incredibly rich characters he created.

I always hesitate in recommending Jaime's earliest stories to new readers. His learning curve was a lot steeper than his brother Beto's, though it is fascinating to see how quickly he evolved in just a couple of years. Even as Jaime puts Maggie through all sorts of adventures, he still takes the time to slowly develop the supporting cast: superhero wannabee and all-around knockout Penny Century, Maggie's long-time friend Izzy Ortiz, Izzy's brother and object of Maggie's affection Speedy, the "prosolar mech" crew of Race & Duke, devilish-looking billionaire H.R. Costigan, and of course Hopey Glass. Maggie is all self-doubt and awkwardness, yet radiates such a powerful sense of self that everyone's drawn to her. She possesses a benevolence that attracts both the right and wrong kind of people to her. Chief among them is Hopey, who's all aggression and acting out. The chip on her shoulder protects her against the world, as we are very slowly introduced to her complexities as a character as the series progresses.

After those earlier stories involving assorted Maggie-centered shenanigans, Jaime turns a corner with "100 Rooms". It's about Maggie, Hopey and Izzy staying at the estate of Costigan at Penny's invitation. Though there's plenty of weirdness (and even super-heroes, something Jaime lovingly pokes fun at throughout the series), the story really turns on the relationship between Maggie & Hopey. One could cut away virtually every other story in this volume, but if you read "100 Rooms", one could easily follow the rest of the series. This story also gives some more time to Izzy, who may be the most interesting of Jaime's characters. We only get hints of her backstory in this volume, but we know that something turned her from a happily married woman to someone into "punker voodoo shit", who started to lose touch with reality. While Maggie started to occupy a perfectly normal universe, things always remained strange for haunted, tortured Izzy.

It's interesting to watch Jaime grow as an artist. He starts off by making all the usual mistakes: cramming too much information on a page, over-rendering his figures, and making some pages difficult to read. This was especially true in his first big storyline, "Mechanics". By the time "100 Rooms" rolls around, he's much closer to reaching his current (and flawless) style: a thinner line, an astonishing level of expressiveness with his characters, an assured use of negative space, and a much clearer sense of both page and panel composition. Above all else, Jaime became the master of gesture and body language. There's one page from "Locas Starring Hopey" where Hopey is confronted with a cop who catches her about to spraypaint graffiti on a wall. As the cop taunts her, her older, wilder self screams out insults as her "inner voice", while Hopey herself remains seemingly-calm as Izzy begs her not to snap. Finally, her inner voice becomes her real voice as she screams out obscenities. The cop is entirely in shadow on the left side of each panel, the increasingly agitated Izzy acts as each panel's anchor, Hopey herself remains impassive, and her younger/thought self becomes the raging object of the reader's eye. It's a brilliant page that perfectly serves this bit of slice-of-life that Jaime would become so good at later in his career.

"Las Mujeres Perdidas" ("The Lost Women") is the last full-length story in this collection. Jaime clearly learned from his earlier mistakes to create a breezy, snappy adventure story starring Maggie and Rena Titanion, the wrestling champ-turned-revolutionary. More intriguing are the brief vignettes he offers up at the end, detailing Hopey's stint in a punk band and more details of her life. As fun as the longer storyline was (with an earnest girl reporter, deadly twin midgets, robots, revolutionaries, etc.), Hopey's story was far more compelling. The best was certainly yet to come for Jaime.
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The old saw on Jaime & Gilbert was that Jaime was the better artist and Gilbert the better writer. That was really only true in the very beginning of the series, and the real differences between them have a lot more to do with their choices as storytellers than judgment as to the worth of their comics. The two brothers have always dealt with a lot of similar issues and scenarios. The most obvious is that they were totally unique in the level of detail devoted to depicting two very different Latino cultures, one in California, one "somewhere to the south of the US border". The new Jaime volume, The Girl From H.O.P.P.E.R.S., is especially vivid in its establishment of time and place. From gang tensions in the barrios to an electrifying snapshot of punk culture to the ennui surrounding slacker culture, there's an aching familiarity to the settings his characters find themselves in. Jaime almost totally junks the fantasy element that dominated his early stories, only retaining the wacky wrestling storyline and the adventures of Rena Titanion.

The story that was the obvious wake-up call for his new direction was "The Death of Speedy Ortiz", a masterwork of pain, tension and longing. I'm not sure if it was coincidence or not, but he wrote this story not too long after he had started drawing in his current, mature style. If there was a flaw in his early work, it was his kitchen sink approach to creating comics, stuffing every page and panel. Once he started to simplify, he was able to write extended narratives that slowly unveiled fascinating truths about the characters. With characterization as his main focus, the stories flowed out of their interactions, especially as he started adding new characters to the mix and expanded on old ones. In addition to our flawed young heroes Maggie & Hopey, mentor Izzy (Speedy's sister), and wacky pal Penny Century, we also meet Ray (a former crush of Maggie who returns to Hoppers) and see more of Doyle (Ray's best friend and a hard-living man who just got out of jail), along with many others.

Starting with "The Death of Speedy Ortiz", there's also a tonal shift. Jaime went from the breezy feel of his early stories to adding a bittersweet layer in every subsequent narrative. Even in the funnier stories and brief anecdotes, there's a tinge of sadness to every situation, with so much that's left unsaid but that is desperate to be spoken aloud. As we learn more of the characters' backstories, it becomes apparent that everyone's youth is quickly slipping away, a fact that no one wants to address but everyone understands. Maggie, Hopey, Izzy, Ray, Doyle and even ditzy Penny all experience loss, trauma and tragedy, but the most desperate battle is the fight to connect with others.

Maggie and Hopey are of course the central figures in this battle, as their literal separation only mirrored the simultaneous ambivalence and desperate connection they felt for each other. Izzy is the tragic figure in all this, a broken woman who alternately is loving and protective and but completely alienated from her environment. Ray has an enormous amount of love to give and proves to be vulnerable, while Doyle's been burned so many times that he also tends to close up or run away. While there are many moments of brief happiness, especially with Ray and Maggie, we leave this collection with Maggie leaving him in order to find Hopey.
If forced to pick a couple of stories that were favorites, I'd take "Tear It Up, Terry Downe" as my first. A side character who was involved with Hopey and resents Maggie, this story uses a 9-panel grid with "interview"-style techniques where different people give their opinion of the prickly Terry and then flashes back to her relationship with Hopey. Jaime's ability to get the audience to understand and sympathize with such an unpleasant character is what makes this story stand out, as we see her go from victim to victimizer to victim once again. The crown jewel in this book may be "Flies On The Ceiling", the harrowing account of Izzy's sojourn in Mexico. Izzy is the one character who retained the magical realist trappings of the series, as her battle with the devil here is both symbolic and quite real. There's a different feeling in this story than in most of Jaime's material from this time, one of dread, a sense that nothing is going to be all right ever again. What's interesting is that this is the feeling often evoked in Gilbert's stories.

Comparing Gilbert and Jaime further, let's look at their similarities. Both freely jump back and forth in time; while there is a central narrative to follow, both artists will jump forward months or years as they see fit. Both love writing and drawing about children; the multi-generational sweep of Love and Rockets is one of its biggest calling cards. Of course, women are the central characters of both artists. Gilbert works with a wider swath of time and so has characters that we first met as infants becoming mothers and even grandmothers. Giving life and raising children, while frequently portrayed as an ordeal, is also what forestalls the sense of doom that's so prevalent in Gilbert's stories. Interestingly, few of the regulars in Jaime's stories have children of their own.

Looking at Love and Rockets V2 #20, Jaime recapitulates Maggie's life with two different strips running in parallel to each other. "La Maggie La Loca" (in color) runs at the top of the page, and "Gold Diggers of 1969" (in black & white) is printed at the bottom. The first story, which originally ran in the New York Times, sees Maggie visiting Queen Rena. Designed as a self-contained story for newcomers, there are plenty of references to Mechanics as well. It's a throwback in that there's a little adventure in there, but there's a slight weariness in Maggie's tone as well. We learn at the end that Maggie turned 40 years old on this trip, and it's clear that while she's gained some perspective in life and even some contentment, there's still a sense of something missing. Having another adventure on her birthday was a bit of a restorative for her, something that she needed to do, and there's a sense that she's going to return to her old life with a slightly different perspective.

"Gold Diggers" is about Maggie as a toddler, drawn in Jaime's Hank Ketcham style. The characters are cuter, simplified and more iconic, but the emotions felt and portrayed are no less complex. Though his figure work is completely different, his mastery of gesture and expressiveness is exactly the same. What's amazing is seeing an artist known for his lush, flowing lines using minimalist techniques with such verve and cleverness. Thematically, it's a delight to read because this style represents the way a child sees the world: simplistic and dramatic, with hidden meanings everywhere.

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As I've written in my past two reviews of the excellent new Love & Rockets collections from Fantagraphics, this new format has almost reinvented the careers of Los Bros. Hernandez. Having the complete Locas stories in three affordable ($16.95 each), portable volumes ends the problem of trying to figure out where to start in the old, 20+ volume collections and also gives a reader a more casual copy rather than buying the Locas coffee table book. That Jacob Covey's design for the books is enormously attractive and does a superb job in getting across the emotional tenor of each book is an added bonus. Perla La Loca contains the latter half of his Love & Rockets Volume I, with his seminal "Wigwam Bam" and "Chester Square" storylines. Those are the storylines that put him on an equal plane with his brother Gilbert. It's sort of Jaime's PhD dissertation as an artist, incorporating all of his old themes and interests while skillfully finding new ways to examine his characters and move them beyond the heady bloom of youth.

These stories are about how someone's absence can be every bit as affecting as someone's presence. Jaime had split up Maggie and Hopey before, but that was usually in the context of some sort of Mechanics adventure of Maggie's. This time around, the reason why they part company and what actually happened to Maggie, is the fuel for "Wigwam Bam's" narrative. As the story opens, the duo is on the east coast, hopping from house party to house party. If Jaime captured the feel of late teenhood and early adulthood in the first two volumes, he's even more evocative in his depiction of the sort of alternating malaise and excitement that 20-somethings feel in that period where they're still allowed to be somewhat aimless and in full possession of their youthful energy. This story starts at the end of that particular road, as both Maggie and Hopey start to unconsciously fear the future. After an argument, Maggie suddenly disappears from the story, and her absence affects every single character in the book.

Danita, now with Ray, is worried when she hears that Maggie has been seen in Hoppers. Ray, jilted by Maggie, is intrigued by this. Maggie's friend Daffy is hurt that Maggie might be back in town and hasn't contacted her. Izzy is haunted by the presence of Maggie and Hopey in her life. That's one of the story's central mysteries--where's Maggie? The other is, who put Hopey's picture on a "have you seen me?" milk carton? Those two simple plot points stir up a complex series of interactions, many of which have been brewing over time. In this volume, Jaime gets a great deal of emotional power from what is not said, not seen and not done, but rather suggested. The first mystery is not resolved in this story, but that lack of resolution in itself is a kind of closure for the denizens of Hoppers. The second mystery proves to be a kind of shaggy dog story, where the actual answer is a goof on everyone trying to solve the mystery--including the reader.

What sets this story apart from past Jaime efforts is the sense the reader gets that he's finally in total command as a storyteller. He effortlessly uses jump cuts and flashbacks while moving the whole story ahead in time. His realistic but supple line often switches styles in mid-panel, using Peter Bagge-style exaggeration and Hank Ketcham-style minimalist cartooning when depicting young children. He manages to imbue every character, no matter how small their role, with a strong inner life and compelling story. A running theme throughout the book is people vainly trying to recapture experiences--a time, a place, a set of people, a set of events. While many of the flashbacks are outrageous and hilarious, there's a certain sadness in many of the characters as they realize that a certain magic has slipped through their hands. Jaime never lets things get too maudlin, and cleverly puts Izzy through an improbable comedic escapade that winds up with her seeing Hopey again--but finding that nothing's the same (and everything's the same).

Doyle proves to be one of the more compelling characters in the story. Always a likable sort of neer-do-well, there's a certain pathos to his story here. We learn about his past and current dead-end future, made all the more grim when he feels desperately cut off from real human contact. There's an amazing depiction of camaraderie between him and Ray, but that's a fleeting feeling because Doyle knows that Ray has real connections that he can't leave behind. His desperate attempt at trying to regain his virility (and a connection to humanity) with Daffy's younger sister is devastating.

The story has two emotional climaxes, one uplifting and the other devastating. The former is a flashback as Izzy reads an old journal of Maggie detailing her friendship with Letty, who died before her 16th birthday. Izzy, always Maggie's protector, introduced her to Hopey in order to help Maggie get over Letty. The story overwhelms Izzy and indirectly reestablishes her emotional connection to Maggie. The latter ending involves Hopey. She had wound up staying in a mansion (in a story that's a sort of twisted parody of "100 Rooms") with a Lucille Ball-like former TV star who has some very unusual fetishes. Hopey inadvertently gets her friend Tex beaten up and almost killed, and she simply walks away, shattered. It had all been fun & games for Hopey, just a bunch of hijinx where the consequences never seemed to matter much for her. She never understood how her charismatic nature, the way that she attracted people to orbit around her, could wind up destroying lives.

Jaime returns to Maggie in the second half of the book, "Chester Square". It's more episodic and rambling and brings Maggie through a very different kind of experience from Hopey. By the end, Maggie finally grows up and learns to assert herself and comes to terms with a number of important people in her life: her sister, her father, Danica, her aunt Vicki, Queen Rena and many more. Maggie reaches her own low point and more importantly comes to terms with what she had to do to survive. Going through that nadir had a sort of transformative effect on her, where she stopped caring what others thought about her. It was that catharsis, combined with Hopey's realization that Maggie was the only really important person in her life, that allowed the two to reunite.

Once again, Jaime returns to a number of his story interests: wrestling melodrama with Vicki Glory and Rena's wrestler brother Diablo, political (and interpersonal) intrigue with Rena, Hispanic culture, a kidnapping plot and much more. He even ties the story emotionally to Speedy's death, and alternates a light, comedic touch with great empathy for his characters who are stumbling their way through their lives.

Maggie notes in this story that she just wants a clean slate and discovers that it's not that simple. Jaime gives the reader a false, "it was all a dream" happy ending that comes in the middle of one of my favorite sequences in all of comics. Maggie has just finally managed to make amends with everyone in her life, including a prostitute that she managed to run afoul of on more than one occasion. Hopey is in town, touring with a new band, desperately looking for Maggie. She spots her going into a bar, and another loose end of Maggie finds her and calls her a whore. As she walks out of the bar, she's slapped by an old woman on the street, which kicks off an amazing sequence where every person in Maggie's life slaps her in the face. That leads to that little dream sequence before Maggie is snapped back into reality, and reunited with Hopey in the back of a police car. It's an ending that's far more satisfying than the false one that Jaime teased us with, and in a way it's an ending he teased himself with. That ending represented a dead end in storytelling, a regression to his earliest development as an artist, and the real ending was just a little reminder of how far he had come as a creator who created an entire dramatic world with characters that we couldn't help but ache for as they struggled.

Ultimately, there's an idealistic streak in Jaime's comics that burns through the hipster cynicism that permeates characters like Hopey and many of her friends. Even Hopey knows that this is just a pose, and that Maggie represents a sort of authenticity in human relationships that she can't achieve otherwise. For Maggie, she had to learn how to focus, find out what she wanted and how to get it. Jaime Hernandez ties in pathos, raw sexuality, humor and action in a rambling, complex and multi-layered storyline that both stands well on its own and builds on what has come before. As always, Jaime is able to skillfully evoke a sense of time and place that grounds the characters but never drags them down. The best news about this volume is that it's only the beginning of Jaime's mature style, and he's only continued to get better.