Love and Rockets: New Stories #5 Review (Gilbert Hernandez, Jaime Hernandez)

With Love and Rockets, I usually prefer Gilbert’s comics over Jaime’s (though Jaime’s the better artist) but surprisingly I enjoyed Jaime’s comics more in New Stories #5.

Jaime tells the story of clownish teenager Tonta (Spanish for “dumb” - subtle!) who lusts after Eric Lopez, the dreamy singer of a local band. The longest episode was also the best: when Tonta and her much hotter half-sister Vivian get mixed up with an elderly gangster who decides to court VIvi and Tonta has to pretend to be her on the phone. It’s a funny, entertaining story with lots of hepped-up melodrama.

The Hernandez Brothers’ world is kind of wonderful in that there are lots of weird people living in the wild somehow. Tonta stumbles across a deformed girl nicknamed “Medusa” who swims in the local lake with a mannequin’s head on a stick! It’s such a strange story but oddly compelling.

Gilbert’s stories are much more maudlin and dull and as usual they’re centred in the remote Central American village of Palomar. The stories jump around in time: Chelo is the just local sheriff and then she’s retired and replaced by a much more thuggish sheriff who stirs up trouble. Despite the bizarre character of Bula, another homeless eccentric who lives in a tree, and her irreverent antics, the stories are quite depressing: characters die viciously and pointlessly while others pine desperately to escape their lives – and fail.

I also noticed more than usual how juvenile Gilbert’s art is with his absurdly ginormous-breasted women and stupidly balloon-muscled men, as well as how plain and empty his panels are with barely any background drawn.

The good thing about Love and Rockets: New Stories is that if one brother isn’t on, the other is, so you get to read at least half a decent book. If you fancy reading a fun, Latino Stray Bullets-esque story, Love and Rockets: New Stories #5 is worth a look.