#locas

[endtimespornorama]

[the-starry-artist]

We dont really get to see much of Equius planet it also doesnt help its name is the land of caves and silence Went for a foreboding void cavern golem

[uzumaakies]

[uzumaakies]

[uzumaakies]

[smashpages]

Out this week: Locas: The Maggie and Hopey Stories (Fantagraphics, $49.99): 

If you’ve never read Jaime Hernandez’s Locas stories, this new deluxe hardcover collects 15 years of work from the legendary Love and Rockets Vol. 1, plus three previously uncollected stories. Maggie and Hopey’s lives in the early SoCal punk scene are rendered with a humanity and grace that’s simply unmatched.

See what other comics and graphic novels will arrive at your local comic shop this week!

[foggyeyes]

a little self-indulgent blabbing about my own blog: it feels like i should to say that, whenever i post Locas/Love & Rockets stuff, i am aware that very few people on this website are invested in it at all. i mostly share it because i think people who have never read it or even heard of it might find these specific panels compelling, beautiful, funny, and so on. and a small but sincere apology to anyone who always thinks "this might as well be spam" because they have one reason or another not to like it under any circumstances. maybe you've already checked it out and didn't like it! not everything can be for everyone, which of course is fine.

BUT!

if you ever see these posts and think "i don't know what this is, so it must not be for me, i don't have the context, time to scroll past" - please know that i'm not posting this stuff assuming anyone even recognizes it. in fact, part of why i do (alongside the compulsion to share whatever i'm fixated on) is that i think it more people on tumblr should be aware of this seminal queer comix story that has run largely nonstop since 1982!

i mean, really - it's a sprawling saga about the lives of (among heaps of other characters) these two working-class latina punks who love each other in many ways, but are too guarded and damaged and obsessed with each other to ever make it work for very long, living in this massive world of wrestling, crime, and rock & roll, with occasional deft little strokes of magical realism. the timeline jumps around, there's tons of foreshadowing and throwaway references that become very important way later, characters drift in and out of each other's orbit over the course of decades, they age and their bodies change in real time. it really takes advantage of its size and of always having the same artist/writer, not just getting longer but getting so much deeper. nothing quite like it in comics, as far as i know.

also i think the art is wonderful, clearly influenced by older "slice of life/romance" style, but with all these great little choices that make it so distinctive. the incredible artistic economy packed into those little boxes! the drama of black and white space! the large and small ways it changes stylistically to reflect or contrast the tone, or to indicate point of view!

an example from vol. 1 #29: this nightmarish (hallucinated?) devil without any of the usual comic-book stylization, then the playing children drawn like they're from "dennis the menace," then the jesus figure from the adult world more detailed (with the child's hand still cartoonish), back to the usual comic book style for this dramatic, horrifying birth, with a little more detail on the sinister, cloaked midwife, evoking that first panel:

i know underground comic books (particularly underground, adult-oriented, non-superhero, non-manga) are a niche interest in general, but i really do think this one is the kind of thing that some people on here could really enjoy, either reading through it or just in tumblr snippets.

and to be clear! very important: i'm genuinely not saying any of this to scold anyone at all!

i don't feel like any of my posts need or deserve more attention, and it doesn't hurt my feelings or anything when they don't get it. i just want to clarify that, more than anything else, i put it up here for people who like the kind of stories that i do but don't have any knowledge or interest in this particular example. (although, shoutout to the handful of you that already do!)

in any case, the important thing is that no matter what, i will be buried honorably, my sarcophagus lined with 0-to-3-note posts. which is fine ;)