I have the first collected volume of Love and Rockets sitting on my shelf, waiting to be read. If I enjoy it I’ll have two options. Option 1 is to buy the 20 or so collected volumes which will run at least $300. Option 2 is to buy Palomar and Locas. These two books will cost about $100.
I’m wondering how much of the story will I miss if I get Palomar and Locas?
The two main stories are Palomar and Locas. But there’s one HELL of a lot of material in those two story arcs. I don’t know if those two are complete.
Also, note that there’s some other pretty good stuff outside those two stories in Love and Rockets.
L&R is, easily, one of the greatest comics there has ever been. Los Bros got it going, man.
I’m pretty sure they are complete. The Locas book is 710 pages long!
Any idea how much I would miss if I just got the two books?
The earliest L&R stories were not great; Los Bros were still learning their craft for the first few issues of the comic. Beto hit his stride with “Act of Contrition” and Jaime peaked with “Death of Speedy.”
The newest stories look great, but haven’t told any major story arcs yet.
I thought this would be related to the band in some way, but the comic sounds interesting.
What’s it about?
Two brother cartoonists tell two epic tales that kind of spun out of control.
Jaime, the brother who draws purty, focuses on Maggie Chascarillo, a Latina from Hoppers (Oxnard), California. The earliest stories are about her exploits as a punk rock chick studying to be a mechanic. She ages in real time, drifts through a series of lovers (male and female), puts on about fifty pounds, manages her aunt (a female wrestling champ) and loses an old flame to gang violence. At her lowest point, she turns tricks in a desert hotel.
Gilbert, the brother who writes better, focuses on the residents of Palomar, a generic Central American town where magical realism defines the life of Luba (a ridiculously zaftig bathhouse proprietress), her extended family and the other residents of the town–many of whom have drifted north to LA.
Imagine reading Gabriel Garcia Marquez to a Los Lobos/Bo Deans soundtrack and you have a fairly good idea of what to expect.
The comic has nothing to do with the band (which named themselves after the comic, not the other way around). The Hernandez Brothers actually had a band called “Love and Rockets” which had to change its name to Nature Boy when the more famous English band briefly got famous.
I was just looking at a review of Dicks and Deedees on the Amazon.com site where it mentioned a story where Maggie got divorced. I must’ve missed that one. Who was Maggie ever married to?
Unless you’ve just won the lottery, definitely go with Locas and Palomar. You could conceivably buy the 20+ trade paperbacks, but with just those two you get probably 90% of what L&R is all about.
Love and Rockets is great! I’ve got Death of Speedy and Tears From Heaven on my bookshelf and would love to get them all.
Yeah, I think I’ll do that. I’ll have to fight my completist tendencies but I think I’ll be OK. 
The OP’s question is how much of the story he’d miss if he bought the two hardbacks. Short answer – none. Long answer – a lot.
The original Love & Rockets ran to 50 issues. Although it was created exclusively by Gilbert and Jamie Hernandez (with a few early contributions by their other brother Mario), it is an anthology comic. Most issues contain several stories from a handful of continuing strips. The two most important strips (both in terms of quality and depth as well as ultimately taking up the most pages) are Gilbert’s “Heartbreak Soup” (the Palomar stories) and Jamie’s set of stories about Maggie, Hopey, and the other characters who live in the Hoppers 13 neighborhood, aka the Locas stories, aka the Mechanics stories. (In the early installments the setting for the Locas stories was more sci-fi than it became, and Maggie was a pro-solar mechanic who could fix space ships and robots.)
After vol. 1 ended, Los Bros. worked on separate projects, some of which (“Luba,” “Penny Century”) continued characters from L&R. In 2001, they started L&R vol. 2, which is currently on issue #12.
The Palomar volume collects all the Heartbreak Soup stories, I believe thru the end of L&R vol. 1. The Locas volume is a little more complicated, because Jamie did some spin-off strips in L&R v.1 featuring Maggie & Hopey’s supporting characters such as Rena Titanon and Penny Century (that groovy chickadee). My understanding is that these don’t appear in Locas.
In addition to this spin-off stuff, I think the two hardbacks don’t include material from the solo projects or L&R vol. 2, much of which continues the stories of the major characters from L&R vol. 1.
But what you’re really missing is the rest of Love & Rockets. While the Heartbreak Soup and Hoppers 13 stories were generally the most powerful and took up the most room, there were lots of other strips in Love & Rockets such as Rocky Fumble, Somewhere in California, and one of my favorites, Errata Stigmata. These side pieces are often more sci-fi and tend to be funnier than the more well-known Palomar and Locas strips and IMO are an important piece of the work that Los Bros. created. This is stuff that you’ll only find in the original issues or in the TPB collections (which is how I read L&R).
Sorry this is long, but L&R has so much stuff and a long enough publishing history that it’s quite complicated. To sum up, if you buy Palomar and Locas you won’t miss any of the Heartbreak Soup story or the main Maggie & Hopey story thru L&R #50, but you’ll be missing some spin-off stories, later-written stories of the characters, and a lot of additional Love & Rockets material from other strips.
–Cliffy
Ack! I spent too much time writing and I’m too late! Don’t do it, pulehoopo!
–Cliffy
Alright, I’ll reconsider then. Thanks Cliffy. Does any know if the other material will be collected in hardcover?
I would give a nod to Poison River. It starts out at being a prequel of Luba’s life before she srrived at Palomar, but evolves into a huge layered story about mob life in Mexico in the 50’s and 60’s.
Actually, you can’t lose no matter which volume of L&R you pick up. It’ll just make you salivate to pick up other volumes and blow that college fund.
FWIW, I’m sold. I’m going to check them out sometime.
I very much doubt that the rest of the stories would be put in HC by strip, like the two current volumes. Like I said, they’re less powerful, more sci-fi, and more over-the-top, plus considerably smaller in terms of page-count.
–Cliffy