Comic books in 'Love and Rockets Edited Hardcovers'

Volume 1 - 1st printing. "The Maggie and Hopey Stories!" By Jaime Hernandez. One of the most humane, graceful and imaginatively inexhaustible artists in American popular culture, Jaime Hernandez has created in Locas one of the great American novels of the last 25 years, graphic or otherwise. Maggie's story begins in the early-1980s Southern California rock scene, when it was shifting from the excesses of glitter rock to the gritty basics of punk and new wave. She quickly befriends Hopey Glass, a feisty anti-authoritarian punkette who quickly becomes Maggie's on-again, off-again lover and a constant presence in her life throughout the book. This book contains all the Maggie stories from the first Love & Rockets series. Hardcover, 8 1/2-in. x 11-in., 704 pages, B&W. Mature Readers Cover price $49.95.

Volume 1 - 2nd and later printings. "The Maggie and Hopey Stories!" By Jaime Hernandez. One of the most humane, graceful and imaginatively inexhaustible artists in American popular culture, Jaime Hernandez has created in Locas one of the great American novels of the last 25 years, graphic or otherwise. Maggie's story begins in the early-1980s Southern California rock scene, when it was shifting from the excesses of glitter rock to the gritty basics of punk and new wave. She quickly befriends Hopey Glass, a feisty anti-authoritarian punkette who quickly becomes Maggie's on-again, off-again lover and a constant presence in her life throughout the book. This book contains all the Maggie stories from the first Love & Rockets series. Hardcover, 8 1/2-in. x 11-in., 704 pages, B&W. Mature Readers Cover price $49.95.

Volume 2 - 1st printing. "Maggie, Hopey, and Ray!" By Jaime Hernandez. This second, doorstop-sized omnibus volume of "Locas" tales by Jaime Hernandez - collecting over a dozen years' worth of stories from the award-winning Love & Rockets comics - picks up shortly after Maggie and Hopey's long-awaited reunion at the end of the Locas hardcover. Even though her love life remains as chaotic as ever, Hopey takes her first few steps toward responsible adulthood with a real job (as a teacher), while a depressed, divorced Maggie ends up as the manager of a fleabag apartment building, where she continues to wrestle with the demons of her past - most prominently in the stunning centerpiece of the volume, the graphic novel-length "Ghost of Hoppers," with its hallucinatory dream finale. On the "guy" side Ray, still carrying a major torch for Maggie, falls in with the "Frogmouth," the volatile bombshell (arguably the sexiest woman Jaime has ever drawn, which is saying something) whose ties to local thugs cause some hairy moments indeed. Of course, Maggie, Hopey, and Ray's paths continue to intersect in Jaime's increasingly complex, always richly imagined world, along with those of characters both old (Izzy Ortiz, Penny Century) and new (the jockette Angel, the mysterious superheroine Alarma). Hardcover, 8 1/2-in. x 11-in., 418 pages, B&W. Mature Readers Cover price $39.95.

1st printing. By Gilbert Hernandez. Collects "Heartbreak Soup" stories from Love & Rockets. Palomar is the mythical Central American town where these stories take place, and the stories weave in and out of its entire population, crafting an intricate tapestry of not only Latin American but also human experience. Hardcover, 9-in. x 11-in., 512 pages, B&W. Cover price $39.95.

1st printing. THE SEQUEL TO THE 2003 PERENNIAL CLASSIC, PALOMAR. When Gilbert Hernandez climaxed his award-winning "Palomar" series at the end of Love and Rockets' original run by leveling the tiny Central American hamlet, many disappointed readers thought he had written off those beloved characters for good. Not so. Hernandez soon picked up the story of Luba (who had not only been one of the dominant characters of the "Palomar" series but had also starred in its prequel "Poison River"): Now older but perhaps not so very much wiser, the hammer-wielding matriarch had relocated to the United States of America, where she continued to contend not only, as an immigrant, with a brand new and not always welcoming culture but also her tempestuous extended family - her eccentric sisters Fritz and Petra, her nurturing but often disapproving cousin Ofelia, her many children ranging from the fully grown (Guadalupe and Doralis) to the latest brood sired by her husband Khamo (Casimira, Socorro, Joselito, and Conchita) - many of them in turn each with her own network of family members, lovers, and friends (including a number of other escapees from Palomar). These "America" stories - over 80 of them, ranging from quick one-page blackout sketches to bona fide graphic novellas - were originally published in a number of different comics and reprinted in a trilogy of oversized paperbacks. Luba finally collects in one compact, affordable hardcover the entirety of these tales, showcasing Gilbert Hernandez's wicked wit, great compassion, and uncanny understanding of how human beings love, squabble, and ultimately find a way to make it through this life. Tales of sex, violence and rock and roll rub elbows with stories of love, sensitivity, and understanding - and thanks to the miraculous alchemy of Hernandez's peerless storytelling, what emerges is a coherent, exciting, funny portrait of one of the richest group of fictional characters ever to spring from a cartoonist's mind. Hardcover, 594 pages, B&W. Mature Readers Cover price $39.99.