Love and Rockets rides again: ‘we influenced a whole lot of cartoonists’
*Jaime and Gilbert Hernandez are back with a 35th anniversary edition of their comic saga Love and Rockets. If you’ve managed to miss it until now, here’s your chance to catch up. VL
By Alex Rayner, Guardian
t has been described as “the comic book event of 2016” by the leading trade journal, Previews. Yet there are no spandex-wrapped super soldiers in Vol IV No 1 of Love and Rockets, dated July 2016, though actually on sale 28 September. Instead, the comic, returning to newsstands on its 35th anniversary, continues its long-running, critically acclaimed stories of ageing southern Californian punks and bizarre central American villagers.
Rolling Stone ranked Love and Rockets as the greatest non-superhero graphic novel of all time, likening it to the Clash, REM and Run-DMC. Time magazine, meanwhile, included its creators, the Latino-American brothers Jaime and Gilbert Hernandez, in its top 100 21st century innovators.
Jaime and Gilbert (third co-founder Mario Hernandez ceased involvement some years ago) have written and drawn the strips since 1981, though the title, like the brothers’ tales, has altered a bit over time.
[Photo courtesy of Love and Rockets]
