On sale date: May 17, 2014
Contains the critically acclaimed and award-winning short comic "Browntown," as well as other stories chronicling the life and loves of Maggie.
Featuring Jaime Hernandez's longtime Love and Rockets heroine Maggie, The Love Bunglers explores the suppression of her family history. Because these secrets can't be dealt with openly, they weigh heavily on her mind. But Maggie's ability to navigate and find meaning in her life — despite losing her culture, her brother, her profession, and her friends — is what's made her a compelling character. After a lifetime of losses, Maggie finds, in the second half, her longtime off-and-on lover, Ray Dominguez. In taking us through lives, deaths, and near-fatalities, The Love Bunglers encapsulates Maggie's emotional history as it moves from resignation to memories of loss, to sudden violence (a theme in this story) and eventually to love and contentment. Hernandez has been following his longtime character, Maggie, around for several decades, which lends this book a powerful emotional resonance.
The Love Bunglers is part of the Love and Rockets series.
Praise
"Skillfully merging tragedy and serendipity, Hernandez brings [Maggie and Ray's] intertwining stories to a satisfying, if hard-won, culmination. The simplicity of Hernandez's page designs and the elegant economy of his drawing style belie the thoughtful sophistication of his storytelling, exemplified by a two-page spread that brilliantly encapsulates two entire lifetimes in just 18 panels. ...[A] heartbreakingly satisfying achievement that leaves the door wide open for further chapters in this most rewarding and accomplished of serialized comics. (Starred Review)" — Gordon Flagg - Booklist
"…[A]s irresistible as ever, peeling back the years to reveal a lifetime of powerful relationships, rejections, infidelities, and adventures." — Calvin Reid - Publishers Weekly
"Jaime Hernandez keeps hitting home runs. It's almost like he doesn't know how to stop. … You don't have to have ever read a Hernandez Bros. story before to appreciate the achievement, but for those who have, it's impossible to reach the end without shedding serious tears. It's that good, heartbreaking, and breathtaking in even measure. It's just about perfect, and you can put that on the book flap." — Tim O'Neil - The A.V. Club
"The culmination of an achingly long will-they/won't-they relationship between Hernandez's signature characters, Hopey and Ray, this is a perfectly drawn, decades-spanning masterpiece by comics' most unblinking and clear-eyed romantic." — Sean Rogers - The Globe and Mail
"[Hernandez's] writing is as funny and candid as ever. His drawing is -- always has been -- just a dream. It seamlessly combines conventional representation and cartoony exaggeration -- often in the same panel. But it's the depth that you drown in, the sense that we are swimming in the deep waters of the heart here." — Teddy Jamieson - The Herald (Scotland)
Specs
- Pages
- 104
- Format
- Hardback
- Color
- Black and white
- Dimensions
- 9.1" × 11.3"
- ISBN-13
- 9781606997291