Locas: The Maggie & Hopey Stories

This beautifully printed 700-page compilation of stories drawn from the legendary Love and Rockets comics would make a great Christmas gift for any comics fan, graphic-arts lover or pop-culture enthusiast. Jaime Hernandez began telling the Maggie and Hopey stories in 1981, creating a saga that is still evolving. Hernandez’s bold black-and-white drawings are exquisitely rendered to reveal subtleties of emotion seldom associated with comic art. And the saga itself, which begins with sci-fi trappings of dinosaurs and rocket ships, eventually develops into a much more naturalistic exploration of personal relationships, sexual dynamics and the economics of rebellion and nonconformity. Female mechanics, lady wrestlers, punk rockers of varying genders and a huge cast of supporting characters populate a black-and-white world colored with very genuine human feelings. Hernandez’s work is as complexly entertaining as any modern novelist’s, and Fantagraphics has done a great thing by assembling these stories in high-quality book form. Bravo!