"Love & Rockets" at 40

October 18, 2022 7:14 PM

For one trio of brothers raised in Oxnard, there was no use in asking for permission to make their comics. They didn't need it. With all the trademarks of an '80s punk mentality, Mario, Jaime and Gilbert began sharing their work on their own... Fans quickly followed, and their fervor remained steady, as did the brothers' creative output. "Love & Rockets," the brothers' ongoing series — now helmed by Gilbert and Jaime — is celebrating its 40th anniversary. And in celebration an hourlong documentary

Plus a Jaime Hernandez interview from 2003 (down the page a bit)

posted by ShooBoo (11 comments total)

And previously.
posted by ShooBoo at 8:24 PM on October 18, 2022 [1 favorite]

Awesome. I started reading the original L&R with #2, which was my introduction to non-superhero comics (excepting things such as Classics Illustrated). Sometimes I wasn't quite sure where things were going--Jaime sometimes seemed to be going for a semi-Jetsons sort of thing before he gradually eased away from the SF elements of his world--but it was definitely a different groove.
posted by Halloween Jack at 8:39 PM on October 18, 2022 [2 favorites]

I love L+R and absolutely hate that fantagraphics won't just release collections of the books in order, and instead do "digests" or "story arc" collections. I get that it makes sense to put Mechanix into a collection, or Gilberts magical realism, but ... I just want to actually read them the way I did growing up when I would get them from the library.
posted by lkc at 10:51 PM on October 18, 2022 [9 favorites]

lkc, Fantagraphics is releasing a 40th anniversary compilation of the first 50 L&R comics.

I dearly wish I had the spare cash to pick it up.
posted by ursus_comiter at 12:18 AM on October 19, 2022 [7 favorites]

I have the vast bulk of the trades and love them. In an odd wild spotting, my wife and I double-featured House and House 2: The Second Story the other night, and there's one scene in House 2 where the goofy frivolous comic relief guy jumps onto a bed and starts reading a comic book, and it's Love and Rockets, which was kind of cool for a Very '80s movie to throw onto the screen.
posted by Shepherd at 2:23 AM on October 19, 2022 [2 favorites]

As someone who grew up in neighboring Ventura, Love and Rockets and Anderson .Paak are why Oxnard ended up way cooler in my book than our churchy white-flight town.
posted by johngoren at 3:47 AM on October 19, 2022

I didn't know that what I needed this morning was a documentary about Love and Rockets, but apparently so. Thank you, I wouldn't have seen it otherwise. L&R is a beautiful, beautiful thing.
posted by Grangousier at 4:21 AM on October 19, 2022 [1 favorite]

Love and Rockets was a gift for someone just breaking in as a reader in the 1980s. Nursed on the mainstream new wave such as Watchmen and Dark Knight, LnR was closer to the underground comix scene that I still didn't know much about and dealt with real people, real lives, relationships, SoCal punk rock ... all while mixing in dollops of sci-fi and mysticism and straight-out-fun kookiness. You could totally fall for these characters, and I did. Here's to Los Bros. With thanks from a long time reader.
posted by buffalo at 5:26 AM on October 19, 2022 [4 favorites]

Wow, that 40th anniversary compilation... that's significantly more than I spend on graphic novels and trade paperbacks in an entire year, but it's still tempting.
posted by Halloween Jack at 10:15 AM on October 19, 2022

Oh man. L&R rocked my world when I encountered it in the 1980's.
posted by rmd1023 at 11:17 AM on October 19, 2022 [1 favorite]

Love and Rockets was very important to me and my eternal sweetheart when we were in our teens and twenties. We really saw ourselves in Maggie and Hopey and the gang, even though we were on the East Coast. It was fascinating to re-read it after living in LA. And literally every time they had a show while I was out there, I found out the day after it closed!
posted by rednikki at 5:17 PM on October 19, 2022