Love and Rockets: New Stories No. 5 (LOVE AND ROCKETS NEW STORIES TP)

It is true what it said in the product description that Jaime was going to have a hard time following his work in issue #4...that issue pretty culminated the entire 30 year history of Maggie, especially her relationship with Ray. That was the happy ending fans had been waiting for, but the book ain't cancelled and it's time to move on. Instead of continuing on with Maggie and Ray's storyline (indeed, they only appear on one page), Jaime has instead decided to concentrate on a newer character, "Tonta," who is the half-sister of fan-favorite Vivian, aka "Frogmouth." Tonta is like the loser version of Maggie. (That's her on the cover, with the blue hair and big sun hat). She's a buck-toothed, hapless, nincompoop, but she has her good qualities and seems well-liked by her friends. The storyline concerns the efforts of Froggy's gang-banger friends trying to hide a gun in her underwear drawer... 'cuz they're trying to shoot some old, rich dude. Most of that is in the periphery--the story centers on Tonta, so there's all this scary murder stuff going on the background and Tonta doesn't care because she's too busy trying on Froggy's lingerie. A 3-pager rounds out Jaime's half of the issue--this one a life story of another old favorite, Doyle, and we probably learn more about Doyle in those three pages than we've learned about him in the past 25 years of his existence. Over in Beto-land, we at last have a proper return to Palomar! He's finally done it after all these years--we meet up with old friends like Tip'n Tip'n, Sheriff Chelo, Vicente, Pipo, Carmen and Heraclio. Yes, they're all still alive and well and waiting within these pages. The storyline, however, revolves Killer's vacation in Palomar. There are many new characters for her to meet; lots of sweet new Palomar oddballs. And a couple of murders. But I digress. There's a lot going on in the 48 page main story "Proof That The Devil Loves You." It ranks up there with Beto's best Palomar stories. Two shorter Palomar stories round out the issue.

Very good artwork and dialogue.

I like this book. I think it's interesting. I first saw it in a local bookstore in the 1990s. I heard that the band with the title Love and Rockets named themselves after this book.

Loved this volume!

This is a complete dud. Don't buy it.Jaime's throwaway story is about new characters, and only at the end of it do we see their tenuous connection with Maggie. This is not enough for me to develop any empathy with them, and I reached the end in disgust.There is one charming but lamentably short story from Gilberto about Vicente's childhood and his connection with Chelo. Apart from that, Gilberto runs two different stories concurrently, one about the young lady named Killer getting to know Palomar, (we discover that she is Luba's granddaughter, not that this roused any interest from me), and the other consists of (presumably) scenes from a feature film. I don't know who is playing the female lead, possibly Fritzi, but all of his unfeasibly busty female leads are starting to look alike now, and the dialogue in this "film" is his usual disjointed claptrap. I found myself, yet again, not giving a toss about trying to ascertain what was going on (perhaps nothing is, and Gilberto is having one long brain fart these days), and wading through molasses to the end of it.Also, for some reason, Gilberto's draughtsmanship is sadly lacking now. The lush penmanship of the last thirty years has degenerated to simplistic scribbles. Jaime's recent spare style is beautiful; Gilberto's merely makes his work look unfinished!I felt cheated by this book, and I hanker for the days of the classic Palomar characters and Las Locas. Obviously they are now long gone, and we must get used to it, and what we have is a lot of bollocks from Jaime, and impenetrable bollocks from Gilberto.

Might just be running out of steam here - Gilbert's story of a film within a story is ok - but is a re-treading of old ground, and Jaimie's 'Frogmouth' just does not inspire in the way of 'Locas'...all good things come to an end I guess