Love and Rockets

Gilbert and Jaime Hernandez are now recognized as two of the greatest cartoonists in the history of the medium. In 1982 when the first issue of Love and Rockets came out, they (occasionally working with their brother, Mario) were two young, struggling cartoonists who were bucking the dominant comic book trend and adolescent content with intimate, novelistic stories told in comics form. Love and Rockets has appeared in a variety of formats over the years and continues to this day, but the original 50-issue run represents a milestone in comics history. Fantagraphics is celebrating and honoring the 40th anniversary of Love and Rockets and the debut of the Hernandez's' first published comics with a gigantic slipcase reprinting each issue in a facsimile edition. Here Fantagraphics honors the original quarterly format by presenting the comics as they appeared between 1982 and 1996 including every cover, comics page, and letter column in seven volumes. An eighth volume is anchored by Love and Rockets scholar Marc Sobel's overview of each issue, plus essays, reviews, and profiles that appeared in the popular (and unpopular) press, a virtual history of the growth of Love and Rockets and the simultaneous rise of the literary comics movement of which they were exemplars and trailblazers.