Locas II: Maggie, Hopey & Ray (Love & Rockets) - Hardcover

Hernandez, Jaime

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1606991566 ISBN 13: 9781606991565

Publisher: Fantagraphics Books, 2009

Synopsis

This second omnibus volume of "Locas" tales by Jaime Hernandez - collecting over a dozen years' worth of stories from the award-winning Love and Rockets comics - picks up shortly after Maggie and Hopey's long-awaited reunion at the end of the Locas hardcover. Even though her love life remains chaotic, Hopey takes her first steps toward responsible adulthood with a real job, while divorced Maggie manages a fleabag apartment building, where she continues to wrestle with the demons of her past - especially in the stunning graphic novel-length "Ghost of Hoppers" with its hallucinatory dream finale. Ray, still in love with Maggie, hangs out with the bombshell "Frogmouth," whose ties to local thugs causes trouble. Of course, Maggie, Hopey and Ray's paths continue to intersect in Jaime's increasingly complex, always richly imagined world, along with those of characters both old (Izzy Ortiz, Penny Century) and new (the jockette Angel, the mysterious superheroine Alarma).

About this title

About the Author

Jaime Hernandez was one of six siblings born and raised in Oxnard, California. His mother passed down a love of comics, which for Jaime became a passion rivaled only by his interest in the burgeoning punk rock scene of 1970s Southern California. Together with his brothers Gilbert and Mario, Jaime co-created the ongoing comic book series Love and Rockets in 1981, which Gilbert and Jaime continue to both write and draw to this day. Jaime’s work began as a perfect (if unlikely) synthesis of the anarchistic, do-it-yourself aesthetic of the punk scene and an elegant cartooning style that recalled masters such as Charles M. Schulz and Alex Toth. Love and Rockets has evolved into one of the great bodies of American literary fiction, spanning five decades and countless high-water marks in the medium’s history. In 2016, Hernandez won the prestigious Los Angeles Times Book Prize for his graphic novel, The Love Bunglers. In 2017, he (along with Gilbert) was inducted into the Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame, and, in 2018, he released his first children’s book, the Aesop Book Prize-winning The Dragon Slayer: Folktales from Latin America. He is a lifelong Angeleno.

Reviews

Starred Review. This omnibus edition starring Hernandez's cast of young L.A. denizens from the pages of Love & Rockets and spinoffs was previously collected in the volumes Dicks and Deedees, Locas in Love, Ghost of Hoppers and The Education of Hopey Glass, but collectors and new readers will like the deluxe hardcover treatment. These stories show the cast past their punk years, away from their youthful dreams but toward what may or may not be maturity. It's hard to be sure whether Hopey will settle into her teacher's assistant job, whether Maggie can be content managing a fleabag motel or whether insecure, obsessive Ray will reconnect with Maggie. The Locas stories jump back and forth in time and place, and inside and outside the characters' minds. Avoiding a tight plot, events become known and felt through characters' responses, glimpses, suggestions, fragments of revelations, adding up to an astonishingly rich and convincing picture of uncertain, developing human relationships. Besides the masterful storytelling, the book is notable for superb black and white artwork. Panel by panel and page by page, it's a delight to watch darkness crowding into open space, while supple linework dances freely in its allotted territory. This is a landmark in comics literature. (Sept.)
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Edition details

• Publisher: Fantagraphics Books
• Publication date: 2009
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1606991566
• ISBN 13: 9781606991565
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 416