Synopses & Reviews
A group of Mexican-American women come of age in Southern California's burgeoning punk rock scene in the early 1980s and mature into the present.
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. Spanning a quarter-century, Locas tells the story of Maggie Chascarrillo, a bisexual, Mexican-American woman attempting to define herself in a community rife with class, race and gender issues.
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. "Hardcore" punk rock came to the fore, and the teenaged Maggie finds herself drawn to the anarchy, energy and diversity of the scene, which in the hands of Hernandez becomes a very real, habitable place populated with authentic human beings rather than stereotypes. 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.
Maggie comes of age in this tumultuous environment, with class and racial tension fueling the rising violence between punks and the already antagonistic LAPD. Hernandez's naturalistic storytelling and mastery of body language and facial expressions, and his pitch-perfect depiction of barrio life all makes for an exhilarating read. His characters are infused with strength, intelligence, independence, imperfection, bitchiness, frailty, obsessiveness, and so much more.
Maggie evolves from an angry young punk into a mature woman. She encounters cruelties large and small and resigns herself to dashed hopes, shattered illusions, and even death with ironic acceptance. Locas presents an incomparable body of work in comics form, created over 20 years (which not coincidentally mirrors Maggie's arc), and told with an uncompromising beauty and grace. As the New York Times Book Review has described it, "These stories have all the visual smarts of film and the narrative smarts of literature....Hernandez specializes in psychological detail; we see both text and subtext immediately....What better than to open a book that shows there is more going on than we dream of in our workaday philosophies?"
Review
"[S]ome of the most engaging characters and most elegantly expressive artwork in all of comics....Back in the 1980s, Love and Rockets was the coolest comic around; as this essential volume attests, Jaime's opus is much more than cool it's classic." Booklist (Starred Review)
Review
"Evoking Bridget Jones by way of Dickens and García Márquez, Locas is magic, real, and literate and fun to look at, too. (Grade: A)" Entertainment Weekly
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"A high point in the comics form, conventional in idiom, but not comparable to any strips before it." The Washington Post
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"Jaime's Maggie is one of the great characters in contemporary American fiction." LA Weekly
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"Hernandez's Locas plunged me into a comics ecstasy I hadn't known since I was 10." The Nation
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"American fiction's best kept secret." Rolling Stone
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"Quite simply, this is one of the twentieth century's most significant comic creators at the peak of his form." Alan Moore, author of From Hell
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"No other man in or out of the field understands women the way [Hernandez] does." Trina Robbins, author of A Century of Women Cartoonists
Review
"The peak of comics as art, as tender and shocking as real life....[M]iss them at your own risk." Heidi MacDonald, Comics Buyer's Guide
Synopsis
Maggie's story begins in the early-1980s Southern California rock scene, when it was shifting from the excesses of the 1970s to the gritty basics of punk and new wave. Hardcore punk rock came to the fore, and the teenaged Maggie finds herself drawn to the anarchy, energy and diversity of the scene, which in Jaime's hands becomes a very real, habitable place populated with authentic human beings rather than stereotypes. 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 As theNew York Times Book Review has described it, "These stories have all the visual smarts of film and the narrative smarts of literature....Hernandez specializes in psychological detail; we see both text and subtext immediately ....What better than to open a book that shows there is more going on than we dream of in our workaday philosophies?"
Synopsis
One of the most humane, graceful and imaginatively inexhaustible artists in American popular culture, Jaime Hernandez has created in Locasone of the great American novels of the last 30 years, graphic or otherwise. Created over 15 years from 1981 to 1996 in the pages of the legendary comic book series Love and Rockets, Locastells the story of Maggie Chascarrillo, a bisexual, Mexican-American woman attempting to define herself in a community rife with class, race and gender issues.
Maggie's story begins in the early-1980s Southern California rock scene, when it was shifting from the excesses of the 1970s to the gritty basics of punk and new wave. Hardcore punk rock came to the fore, and the teenaged Maggie finds herself drawn to the anarchy, energy and diversity of the scene, which in Jaime's hands becomes a very real, habitable place populated with authentic human beings rather than stereotypes. 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.
As the New York Times Book Reviewhas described it, "These stories have all the visual smarts of film and the narrative smarts of literature....Hernandez specializes in psychological detail; we see both text and subtext immediately ....What better than to open a book that shows there is more going on than we dream of in our workaday philosophies?"
Synopsis
One of the great American novels of the last 30 years, graphic or otherwise. Created over 15 years from 1981-96 in the pages of the legendary comic and collected here in a giant deluxe hardcover.
About the Author
Jaime Hernandez lives in Pasadena, CA, with his wife and daughter.