Wednesday, July 24, 2019

Love and Rockets: Here we go again, just like animals



Both of the Hernandez brothers were punk renegades in their youth, and have reached the same age of nostalgia and introspection, so it's no wonder they have both had stories with old characters getting together for an old school punk show, catching up on characters, some of whom we haven't seen in decades.

But while Jamie stretched out that reunion over multiple issues (and years) of Love and Rockets - and the pitch-perfect one-page epilogue at the start of the recent #7 shows that things aren't entirely settled for Maggie yet - Gilberto blasts his own path, as always.

The latest issue features Beto shooting out of the gate with his own reunion of characters, touching on similar points of age and time, but also ending things with more finality than his brother - one storyline that has run for years and years, symbolising a toxic partnership that nobody can end,  comes to a dramatic full stop.

In his few pages of the latest issue, Beto still gets in loads of dopey gags, goes off on a tangent about the real-life consequences of reviewing things, and still finds time for a mega-dump of music love, before wrapping this later chapter up with that definitive ending. He's not messing about.

Love and Rockets comics are always the best comics, and the contrast between the work produced by the two brothers is part of that endless appeal. They might start from the same place, but the journey is always different, and they're always making something new and unusual. They might be getting as old and creaky as some of their favourite characters, but Los Bros Hernandez are as vital as ever.

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