Love (and marriage) and Rockets

When you've been following the lives and loves of a single character for 40 years - especially one created by an absolute comics maestro like Jaime Hernandez - sometimes you miss or are blind-sided by the big life-changing events. Because you just can't cover everything in a complex life like this, and sometimes those huge moments just suddenly happen in the last couple of pages of the new Love and Rockets.

The way Ray and Maggie tie the knot in the latest issue of the brilliant ongoing comic series by Los Bros Hernandez is so understated, and so fitting for people in their fifties who know they don't have time to fuck around anymore and need to efficiently deal with their issues.

They're not kids anymore. Time to get on with things. (Except for Hopey, who really looked settled down for a while, but is actually still playing the same old song, one involving yet another Maggie substitute/doppelganger, which must be the fifth or sixth time this has happened.)

And so those two pages at the end of the issue, featuring  a courthouse marriage between two people who have loved each other their entire lives, even when they went years without admitting it. Just a couple of witnesses (but at least one of them is Hopey, Mags ain't that cruel), and the job is done.

Maggie has form with this, keeping some of her most significant milestones hidden deep inside. This isn't even her first marriage, with her last one happening entirely off page, and only confirmed when it was over. I still wonder how Tony is doing, although seeing everyone else at that reunion a couple of years ago was so fab.

There's no drama to it, because there usually isn't in real life. When I went through a wedding phase in my life - 20 in one year! - I used to fantasise about everything going a bit soap opera, but it never did. Not all of those marriages were that quiet, but there was no drama at the ceremony.

And you're left with the idea that after all these people have been through, they just fucking deserve some peace and quiet. Some rest, and sealing it with an easy declaration that doesn't burn down their world, but just gets on with things. That's love. Never mind the rockets.