The Love Bunglers (Love and Rockets)

I’ve been reading Love and Rockets since the late 90s. I didn’t get to read the original series until the omnibus came out in 97. The. I read the whole Locas story. I read 20 years, they age, in a few days. It was a read that still brings out a lot of emotions. It centers around people from a Hispanic community that didn’t fit the stereotype you’d imagine. You got kids who loved punk and rock and were just like me growing up.Then ten years later I see Love Bunglers. Inside a bookstore at a University. I read it. I use my whole lunch hour(I read fast), and by the end of it, that last page. Thirty years of stories, gets two people together who should been together for ages.And I start to cry a little. Not ugly cry, but happy to see two people together cry.It would be an almost perfect stopping point for any story, but the story ends when life does and there is still life for the people from Hoppers.

I came to Love & Rockets pretty late in the game. This book is a collection of stories that appeared in the first 4 volumes of Love & Rockets New Stories. Lately L&R has been reprinted not strictly chronologically but by story arc. This is a super great thing for them to do, and in many ways it makes the stories even more coherent and interesting to read. In my mind this edition is a really amazing conclusion to the Maggie/Hopi arc that has been with this series since the beginning. I think this edition stands on its own but it will be EVEN more impressive if you have background on the characters (http://www.amazon.com/Girl-HOPPERS-Love-Rockets-v/dp/1560978511/ref=sr_1_12?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1399425336&sr=1-12&keywords=love+and+rockets might be a good place to start). Basically this takes the Maggie's story to a whole new place.Again, I think this is a really amazing edition even for new readers of L&R, it might even be the thing that drags you in - BUT it will be especially meaningful to you if you already have an attachment to the characters. Its worth mentioning that the story/chapter Browntown within this edition has won numerous awards.

Jamie Hernandez has created some of the most entertaining and endearing female characters in comics history. This book mostly focuses on the relationship between Ray and Maggie. Maggie and Hopie being the two main female characters in his long running comic "Locas'", but by no means the only outstanding women in his fictional land, a place called Huerta, CA or simply, Hoppers by the locals. The setting may be Los Angeles, but to those of us who grew up in the punk scene it's as familiar as any town U.S.A. thanks to Jamie's down to Earth portrayal of a people and a place in time. I can't say enough to express how much these characters mean to me, and I am so thrilled that he and his brother choose to keep them alive to this day. I will buy every single thing they produce and gladly and you should too, I promise you won't be sorry.

Not sure how I managed to miss Jaime Hernandez all these years. I'm very late to the party...This is a brilliant book! The nuanced, character rich storytelling left me begging for more. In a funny way it reminded me of the best parts of Ghost Town and Strangers in Paradise - compelling characters living in a rich, vibrant world. They live in the series and in the heart and mind of the author. I'm thankful for this slice of "love and rockets" life. I have a feeling that I'll be buying many, many more books by Jamie Hernandez.

At first I wasn't so sure about buying this since I didn't really like the last volume of Love and Rockets: Esperanza. I was so very wrong to doubt Jaime. He is in top form here! I think newcomers can enjoy this book because these stories are universal (you may see someone you know or even yourself in these characters) but of course I recommend that you read the rest of Jaime's work before you read The Love Bunglers.

I am perpetually blown away by how well (and how accurately) Jaime Hernandez writes female characters, which is exceedingly rare. I've been reading his work since the first issue of Love & Rockets was published in the early 1980s, and he continues to be one of the most imaginative, abundantly gifted, brilliant artists/writers on the planet. I feel as though I grew up with Maggie and Hopey, and if you love Love & Rockets as much as I do, this book is a must-have. Powerful and moving, and altogether wonderful.

Brilliant. I hadn't read any Love and Rockets comics since probably the late 90s or early 2000s when I came across this book. The characters in this book are just as real as ever, the writing is just as heartbreaking.

Good story that kept my interest the whole way through. Would like to read more by Hernandez.

We all know and love Maggie Chascarillo, but everyone has secrets. This graphic novel covers Maggie in the present day - overweight, managing an apartment block and trying to reboot her career as a mechanic. It also gives us some poignant insights into a chapter of Maggie's past, when she went to live in Cadezza (the 'brown town') with her family. Pre-teen Maggie is familiar from the earlier books, but we also get to meet an adorable, opinionated toddler version of her sister Esther, and find out more about her brothers, including Calvin. Always seen as 'weird,' he falls in with some local boys and submits to some terrible things, thinking he is protecting his family, but when the ringleader of the group starts looking at Maggie, Calvin snaps...The family's life is broken apart by revelations of Maggie's father's infidelity (her mother knew, but chooses to blame her daughter rather than her husband). Maggie and her family return to Hoppers and try to re-integrate, in a chapter told by Maggie's best friend, Letty Chavez, whose life is cut short in three of the saddest, most beautiful frames Jaime has ever created. He really has lost none of his power.In the present, Maggie and her ex-boyfriend Ray struggle to reconnect, and Ray disappears - but why? Can these two outrun the past and be together? One of the strongest and subtlest books in the series.

What a gem of a book. It consists of Jaime's strips from the New Stories numbers three and four, which is a blessing for me, because #4 is currently out of print and vendors are asking for far too much money. So if Fantagraphics wants to compile Gilberto's work from those books, too, that would be great.I read New Stories 1 and 2, and was very disappointed because there was so little in them about Maggie or Hopey, and I wanted him to come back to those characters. And then I read this! We learn precious little about Hopey's life here, as the story concerns pivotal episodes in Maggie's childhood, and a completely wonderful ending - which I won't spoil by revealing. So perhaps Hopey's story is covered from number five onward? This book, though, fills in a lot of blanks about Maggie's life before she became a mechanic, and about her family and another character whom I won't reveal, about whom we have read in earlier L&R books.If you've been following Maggie's and Hopey's lives, as I have, The Love Bunglers is essential reading - especially as we can't get New Stories #4!

A work of graphic genius! Jaime Hernandez is the most beguiling of artists with a clean simplicity which is classic and absolutely beautiful. His composition and pacing are second to none, and if you love the graphic format, whether that be fine art, Archie comics or 60s Marvel, you will find something to admire here.But the writing is the real joy. A tale of family secrets, child sexual abuse, hidden anger, and how time changes lives, this tale will break your heart in a hundred ways. And then a shocking and unexpected event leads to...Something I can't reveal. But if you have followed Love and Rockets, as I have, for thirty years, this tale could be the culmination of Maggie's story. As satisfying as the end of " the Wire", in its own way, this is a must read.Beyond recommended...graphic novel of the year. Any year!

I've been reading Love & Rockets ever since 19oatcake, when I bought a copy of L&R 11 because I thought it looked intriguing. For me, Maggie and Hopey were the out-and-out stars of the comic and I followed them assiduously for years, only finally giving up when L&R switched to annual publication. This book, then, as far as I can tell, is (it certainly should be) the final Maggie story - any continuation after this seems to me to be entirely redundant and I have to admit I found it remarkably poignant. I don't know if it would have the same effect if you're not familiar with the backstory, but this book rounds off one of the most remarkable extended storylines in comics history. If you like, or liked, Love & Rockets you simply have to buy this.

I've long loved the stories of Jaime, preferring them to Gilberts equally brilliant work. Here we flit between Maggie's adulthood and childhood looking at key periods that influenced her life and those people in her orbit. Beautifully written and drawn, with a storytelling style reminiscent of Gabriel Garcia Marquez.