This is my life again: Falling back into Love and Rockets

All my favourite bookstores in my home town only exist in memory now, but the exact spot where I fell for Love and Rockets forever is still there, by the pool. 

It's a patch of grass, right next to the outdoor swimming pool overlooking Caroline Bay, and I walked over it again the other day and genuinely felt the love. The whole complex has been redone and expanded (and it's bloody brilliant, the kids love that lazy river thing), but the original pool is still sitting outside, and the L&R memories are still strong there.

I first read the work of Los Bros Hernandez in a British reprint edition that took a bunch of Jaime's House of Raging Women stories and presented them in a way that made no linear sense, like they were Archie strips that could just go in any order. I had absolutely no idea what was going on, but the art was gorgeous, the characters were intriguing and trying to figure out what was happening in a comic where I only had a few issues was always one of the most fun parts of the hobby.

So there I was in the hot summer of '93, hanging out by the pool and re-reading that one collection over and over again. I soon got a few actual issues of the Love and Rockets magazine from Comics Compulsion up in Christchurch (another beloved shop that slowly faded away), and read them on the same spot of poolside grass.

And slowly I started to put the story together - the Tear It Up, Terry Downe short story was crucial for this - and while it took several years before I actually got my hands on all of the original run of the comic, it will always be tied to that tiny piece of geography.

Love and Rockets will always be one of my two favourite comics, along with the immortal 2000ad, and that one spot is such a big part of my initial enjoyment of it, that when I saw it the other day, it was all the impetus I needed to get back into the comic.

So I've been catching up with the past decade or so of Hernandez brilliance, started with the undisputed majesty of The Love Bunglers, and that's already got me digging into the older stuff again, seeing new connections and themes in the old work.

I know I'll never recapture all the sheer joy of that first experience, in the sun of 1993, by that swimming pool. But when the comics are this good, I can still catch some of it.