Love & Rockets Vol. 12: Poison River - Softcover

Gilbert Hernandez; Jaime Hernandez; Los Bros. Hernandez

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1560971517 ISBN 13: 9781560971511

Publisher: Fantagraphics Books, 1997

Synopsis

Gilbert Hernandez (Love and Rockets series) has produced some of the best comics work of the last ten years. Poison River is the story of one of his most engaging characters, Luba-self-possesed, intelligent an iconoclastically sexy- in the years before she arrived in Palomar, Hernandez's mythological Central American Village. We meet Maria, Luba's mother, beautiful, pampered and recklessly promiscuous. Maria's husband discovers that Luba is the result of a tool-shed trystwith Eduardo, a poor indian worker and kicks mother, child and lover out into poverty. Glamorous Maria abandons the other two in turn, and much later a teenage Luba meets her future husband Peter Rios, a conga player and small-time(soon to be big-time) gangster who takes her away to a life of privilege. But their meeting is not by chance and Rio's peculiar sexual obsessions (women's navels and well-hung chorus "girls") are driven by carnal memories of the exquisite Maria. Indeed Luba's new life (and the men in it) is much like her mother's - lavishly sheltered by violent anticommunist gangsters, who murder and terrorize the local "leftists" in the name of "business" and right-wing patriotism.

About this title

Review:

Fifty issues--collected into 15 volumes that total 2,000 pages--the Hernandez brothers' Love and Rockets is an enormous achievement that helped to create a new audience for comics. Notable for their strong female characters and their focus on relationships, rather than on traditional comic-book 'action', the stories collected in this volume, and the rest of the series, show how the comic format can be used to create characters and situations as detailed and compelling as in any novel.

Reviewers have compared Gilbert Hernandez's work--set in the fictional Latin American town of Palomar--with that of Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Robert Altman. Reading his brother Jaime's work--most of which focuses on a group of Southern California Mexican American women--is like reading Tolstoy, if only Tolstoy had written about twenty-something punk girls. Love and Rockets has certainly earned its legendary reputation among the comic-book cognoscenti, and deserves to be read by an even wider audience. Welcome to the world of Los Bros Hernandez.

From Publishers Weekly:

Along with his brother Jaime, Gilbert Hernandez (Love and Rockets X) has produced some of the best comics work of the last 10 years. Poison River is the story of one his most engaging characters, Luba-self-possessed, intelligent and iconoclastically sexy-in the years before she arrived in Palomar, Hernandez's mythological Central American village. We meet Maria, Luba's mother, beautiful, pampered and recklessly promiscuous. Maria's husband discovers that Luba is the result of a tool-shed tryst with Eduardo, a poor Indian worker and kicks mother, child and lover out into poverty. Glamorous Maria abandons the other two in turn, and much later a teenage Luba meets her future husband Peter Rios, conga player and small-time (soon to be big-time) gangster who takes her away to a life of privilege. But their meeting is not by chance and Rios's peculiar sexual obsessions (women's navels and well-hung chorus "girls") are driven by carnal memories of the exquisite Maria. Indeed Luba's new life (and the men in it) is much like her mother's-lavishly sheltered by violent anticommunist gangsters, who murder and terrorize the local "leftists" in the name of "business" and right-wing patriotism. Hernandez has written an epic Latin American melodrama of lost identity, political violence and polymorphous sexuality. And while his complex plotting is occasionally confusing, his characterizations, dialogue and relationships are vividly, emotionally engaging. A brilliant draftsman, Hernandez presents a wide range of facial and physical types, all rendered with an expressive facility and a deft comic flourish.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Fantagraphics Books
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 1560971517
• ISBN 13: 9781560971511
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 120