{"id":5981,"date":"2010-09-29T00:26:36","date_gmt":"2010-09-29T04:26:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/comicscomicsmag.com\/?p=5981"},"modified":"2010-09-29T00:26:36","modified_gmt":"2010-09-29T04:26:36","slug":"love-and-rockets-3-notebook","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/comicscomicsmag.com\/?p=5981","title":{"rendered":"Love and Rockets #3 Notebook"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

The new Love and Rockets<\/p><\/div>\n

WARNING. Normally I wouldn\u2019t put in a spoiler warning for a few blog notes, but this is a special case. I\u2019m going to be talking about Love and Rockets: New Stories #3<\/a>, which contains what is arguably one of the best comics stories ever, Jaime Hernandez\u2019s \u201cBrowntown\u201d (along with the stories \u201cThe Love Bunglers Part One\u201d and \u201cThe Love Bunglers Part Two\u201d which are essential accompaniments to the main tale). These stories are built around a series of unfolding surprises. The best way, really the only way, to appreciate them is to read them. It\u2019s essential that any commentary be read after encountering the stories. So please go out there and read Jaime\u2019s stories in this volume (and also Gilbert\u2019s two stories) and then come back and read these notes.<\/p>\n

<\/strong><\/p>\n

What Gilbert is up to.<\/strong> Before getting to Jaime, I want to talk a bit about Gilbert\u2019s story. Because Jaime\u2019s stories here are so good, arguably a high-water mark in his career (and hence a peak achievement in comics), there is the danger that Gilbert\u2019s work will be overlooked. Some reviewers have even expressed puzzlement at Gilbert\u2019s two stories in this issue (\u201cScarlet by Starlight\u201d and \u201cKiller*Sad Girl*Star\u201d), saying in effect that they don\u2019t know what Gilbert is up to. Here\u2019s a thought: in \u201cScarlet by Starlight\u201d Gilbert is re-writing some of his earlier Palomar stories in a different genre and in a different emotional key. \u201cScarlet by Starlight\u201d benefits in particular from being compared to earlier stories like \u201cHuman Diastrophism\u201d and \u201cAn American in Palomar.\u201d In those stories, infused by an earthy humanism and light fantasy, we saw the clash between the \u201cFirst World\u201d (American technology and scientific expertise) and the \u201cThird World\u201d (poorer societies where life is at once more emotionally expressive but also more brutal). In \u201cScarlet by Starlight\u201d this clash of cultures is re-written in pulp sci-fi terms (the story itself is one of Fritz\u2019s films), and also told in a much colder way, with a notable lack of emotional affect on the part of the characters. Again we have people from the \u201cadvanced\u201d society going into a supposedly \u201cprimitive\u201d culture and becoming emotionally entangled with the people there, with dire consequences. The slaughter of the \u201cpinkies\u201d in \u201cScarlet by Starlight\u201d recalls the massacre of monkeys in Palomar. In \u201cKiller*Sad Girl*Star\u201d the same material gets re-cycled a third time by being a story within a story, and a commentary on present-day America.<\/p>\n

Paradise Lost?<\/strong> Creators often return to the same key story, re-working it again and again in different modes. As I\u2019ve suggested before, for Dan Clowes that essential story is Orpheus (and perhaps also the love triangle that lies at the core of orphic mythology). For Gilbert, I think the key story is that of the early books of Genesis: they fall from Eden. Palomar, when we first encountered it, was a kind of paradise, albeit one populated by very flawed people. But over time, we\u2019ve learned that the halcyon statis of Palomar is impossible: forces both external and internal are working to destroy it. \u201cScarlet by Starlight\u201d is another variation of the story of Paradise Lost. (Jaime\u2019s great myth is the story of the princess who has magic powers but loses them).<\/p>\n

Jaime\u2019s masterpiece?<\/strong> Several reviewers have already said that the Jaime\u2019s three stories in this issue are among his best work. Of course, with an artist as prolific as Jaime, who has done top notch for for nearly thirty years now, one should be careful in singling out particular stories, since what is really amazing is the body of work. Still, some of his stories do distill his art in a particular effective way: \u201cFlies on the Ceiling\u201d, \u201cJerusalem Crickets\u201d, \u201cSpring 1982\u201d. The three stories in the new issue feel like they are of that calibre; interestingly in the past Jaime\u2019s peak work tended to very brief (\u201cJerusalem Crickets\u201d is 6 pages long). These are stories where he zooms in on a character or mileu with such accuracy that we learn all we need to know in a few pages. “Browntown” is different: it\u2019s longer, and not just about one character or moment in time but really about the ripple of family secrets over a lifetime. The length of the story is no guarantee of its merit, but it does suggest that \u201cBrowntown\u201d\u00a0 has a range that wider than many of Jaime\u2019s stories.<\/p>\n

A tough subject.<\/strong> \u201cBrowntown\u201d deals with a tough subject, one of the toughest subjects around, the rape of a child. But it deals with this harsh material with great delicacy and is not at all exploitive or gratuitous. Having said that, the child abuse is only one thread of the story and, I would argue, not the core of what Jaime is dealing with. I think the key to this story comes in a comment made by Maggie: \u201cThere are certain things about my family mom always preferred to keep hush hush.\u201d Family secrets, the suppression of family history, is the thread that ties everything together: the affair that Maggie\u2019s dad had, the rape of Maggie\u2019s brother, and Maggie\u2019s own alienation from her family: because these secrets can\u2019t be dealt with openly, their lingering effect is all the more powerful.<\/p>\n

Pacing and unfolding stories<\/strong>. I don\u2019t know if I have the critical vocabulary to describe one of Jaime\u2019s greatest skills, which is the pacing and unfolding of stories. He really knows how to sequence events for the maximum effect, and goes back and forth in time in an effortless way. The only other artist I can think of who does this is Alice Munro in her more recent collections, where the best stories are never told straight (beginning-middle-end) but rather are presented in looping movement between the past and the present, with the writer carefull disclosing information only when needed. I usually distrust \u201csurprise endings\u201d as gimmicky throw backs to the O. Henry era, but both Munro and Hernandez have shown the power that a story can achieve by keeping crucial information hidden till nearly the last minute. I literally gasped when the big surprise came in \u201cThe Love Bunglers Part Two.\u201d That was the second time Jaime had a visceral effect on me in this issue. The first time was when I started crying at the end of\u00a0\u201cBrowntown.\u201d I do think that this movement back and forth in time is something comics are, arguably, particularly good at: an artist like Jaime doesn\u2019t need to say he\u2019s going back in the past, he can do so just by showing how people dress and look. Film can do that, but it\u2019s harder for film to show the same character at many different ages: it requires make-up and sometimes several actors (as in The Godfather Part II). Jaime can show us Maggie at any age and we quickly grasp when the story is set.<\/p>\n

Learning from Gilbert.<\/strong> The story that needs still to be told about the Hernandez Brothers is the way they\u2019ve constantly influenced each other. There is some unepected and atypical violence in \u201cBrowntown.\u201d It is very brief but shocking. I wonder if Jaime hasn\u2019t been influenced by some of Gilbert\u2019s recent stories which have also had scenes of carnage: in particular \u201cChance in Hell\u201d and \u201cSpeak of the Devil\u201d.<\/p>\n

A mega-novel.<\/strong> What genre is Jaime working in? (Or for that matter Gilbert in his Palomar and post-Palomar work?) The category of soap opera doesn\u2019t quite work. I often think Jaime is doing something similar to what John Updike did in his four Rabbit novels (and sort of sequel, the novella \u201cRabbit Remembered\u201d): following a character around for several decades. The collected Rabbit books are sometimes called a \u201cmega-novel.\u201d Other mega-novels would be the Palliser series Trollope did, maybe also Powell\u2019s Dance to the Music of Time. So why don\u2019t we call the complete Locas stories a mega-graphic-novel? As with all mega-novels, part of the effect of each segment comes from how they change or or strengthen our view of the characters. Trollope talked about the peculiar aesthetic of the multi-volume novel series in his Memoirs<\/em>, comments that any student of the Hernandez Brothers should look up.<\/p>\n

Gratitude.<\/strong> It\u2019s so easy to take the Hernandez Bros. for granted: they\u2019ve been around so long, put out work regularly, and often use the same characters. So the temptation is to just think that they\u2019re a stable public resource, like the library or a museum: they\u2019ll always be there and we can ignore them for years, checking in on them only when we need to. But really, these guys are among the best cartoonists who have ever lived. Like Seth, Chris Ware, Dan Clowes,\u00a0and Kim Deitch, they are constantly pushing themselves to do better work, and are now at a career peak. We need to give thanks for this, loudly and publicly.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

WARNING. Normally I wouldn\u2019t put in a spoiler warning for a few blog notes, but this is a special case. I\u2019m going to be talking about Love and Rockets: New Stories #3, which contains what is arguably one of the best comics stories ever, Jaime Hernandez\u2019s \u201cBrowntown\u201d (along with the stories \u201cThe Love Bunglers Part One\u201d and \u201cThe Love Bunglers Part Two\u201d which are essential accompaniments to the main tale). […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[500,554,612],"class_list":["post-5981","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","tag-gilbert-hernandez","tag-heer-notebook","tag-jaime-hernandez"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/comicscomicsmag.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5981","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/comicscomicsmag.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/comicscomicsmag.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicscomicsmag.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicscomicsmag.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5981"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/comicscomicsmag.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5981\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/comicscomicsmag.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5981"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicscomicsmag.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5981"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicscomicsmag.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5981"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}