Product Description: Maggie returns in Hernandez's first book since the smash hit Locas.
Ghost of Hoppers collects for the first time the new adventures of Maggie Chascarrillo, as serialized in the Love & Rockets comic book, and represents Jaime Hernandez's much-anticipated follow-up to his critically acclaimed 2004 magnum opus Locas, which Entertainment Weekly gave an 'A' for its "innovative technique and complex, character-driven stories about Mexican-American life."
Ghost of Hoppers begins with the newly divorced Maggie now working as the resident building-manager of the notorious Capri Apartments deep in the heart of the San Fernando Valley, where imaginary dogs roam its walkways at night, all the air conditioners are broken, and the empty swimming pool is covered with flies. As if the eccentric, oddball tenants weren't weird enough, Maggie's houseguest and old friend Izzy Ortiz shakes things up with her usual nervous breakdowns, nocturnal screaming, and obsessive fly-swatting (sometimes with a knife!). When Izzy makes a guest appearance on a local cable access talk show to promote her book, Maggie meets the voluptuous Vivian the "Frogmouth," a curvaceous, hapless bombshell with a foghorn voice who is despised by Hopey (Maggie's long time on-again-off-again girlfriend, now a bartender sporting an eye patch after one of Vivian's previous bottle-breaking altercations). Maggie finds herself swept up in Vivian's life of random catfights, her mob-connected, knife-wielding stalker ex-boyfriend, and his violently jealous fiancée. Maggie and Vivian eventually strike up a reluctant and awkward romance, and when they set out for Hoppers to retrieve a stolen art object from Izzy, they get a lot more than they bargained for!
About Jaime's work, the New York Times wrote, "These stories have all the visual smarts of film and the narrative smarts of literature. Hernandez specializes in psychological detail; we see both text and subtext immediately. What better than to open a book that shows there is more going on than we dream of in our workaday philosophies?"
THE PRESENT IS AS GOOD AS THE PAST Jaime Hernandez takes his heroine Maggie on a journey through her past so that she can reconcile the changes that have occurred around her. The girl's old neighborhood of Hoppers is the living metaphor for how far she has come in life, and the demons she wrestles with have both a touch of the metaphorical and the literal (in the supernatural sense). Though heavy and perhaps one of Hernandez's deepest scripts since DEATH OF SPEEDY, it also has the trademark Xaime fun, with Maggie sharing many a kiss with a crazy outsider whose link to the history Maggie has abandoned will only come clear with time.
Naturally, the cartooning is awesome. Jaime Herandez makes it all look so effortless. His ink line is gorgeous, and he's a master of reduction. The final chapter is a wonderful interplay of past and present, with various timelines rising up from nowhere, and the artist keeps them all clear and even, leading his reader through the drawing as much as the writing.
If you haven't read LOVE & ROCKETS in a while (like me), this is a good place to come back to the series.
some of jamie's best and most horrific This the 22nd volume of the collected love and rockets comic series (now under the name a new love). This volume focuse on one the most beloved characters of the series Maggie. Maggie is a insecure aging punk who is always aware she is getting older, bigger, and trying to still live up to her punk ethics. Maggie and on again off again love intrest Hopey made up the punk side of love and rockets in the past. In "a new love" they are now grown and trying to deal with punk, each other, and life. They grew up in an area called hoppers (thus the title). Hoppers was once a punk haven barrio were Maggie and Hopey were endlessly partying and getting in trouble. It is the punk equal to Gilbert's palomar. It's the home Maggie and Hopey can never go back to, and the mythic punk past they both share. In these issues hoppers is now a kind of sad suburb in decline. Maggie is now living in a L.A. motel as the handyman (er... handyperson). A far cry from the top mechanic she used to be early in the series. But jobs were never Maggie's strong point. And, while sometimes down maggie is never out. There is a new love intrest for Maggie (kind of!?). Perhaps the new love interest is just more trouble... Things really take a turn for the macabre when Izzy (Isabella, speedy's sister ect.) comes to stay with Maggie to make an appearance on a local cable access show. Suddenly Maggie is plunged into a surreal, chaotic supernatural chrisis. One where crucifixes brake and bleed. One where flies fill an empty pool for no reason. The truly horrific moment you only catch if you pay attention to when Maggie's phone doesn't work but rings anyway (Izzy "he tells you what you want to hear..."). In the very first issues of love and rockets we saw large black dogs chasing Izzy's car. We also know Izzy was running from someone or something the first time we see her in issue one. In flies on the ceiling we were let in on the horrible secret Izzy hid from everyone about what happened in mexico. The dogs return for the first time in 20 years in this collection. And one of them speaks to Maggie! What is the horrible secret? It is either answered or hinted at (let the reader decide if the car trip with Maggie and Izzy answers all or not!) Only we see in the flashbacks the horrible truth, or do we? The last 3rd of this collection is the creepiest, most horrific art and story Jamie has ever done. It is mythic in it's black and white (like the first living dead). The car drive with Maggie aand Izzy is like a David Lynch film they seem to be talking at each other without either understand what the other is talking about. The sences of Maggie in the fire at Izzy's house can't be described. They have to be seen (for the most part there is no dialogue) to be understood. Izzy's rant in the middle is the decision we have been waiting for her to make since issue one... But what is the decision? There is so much crammed in this single volume that once it all plays out it will be remembered like the volume "death of speedy" as one of love and rocket's best. This volume leaves us wanting to know what happened to Izzy? Izzy has been a staple of the comic since it began, but always as the punk representaion of the scary witch lady that lives on your block that no one will talk too. What was the small 3 fingered thing Maggie saw in the road that night that lit the fire that destroyed Izzy's house. Why can't Maggie remeber being married (Izzy has an idea but is soooooo sinister)? Why is Maggie's super hot (perhaps super hero or super villian?) tenant looking at her like that at the end of the volume? What really happened between the time Maggie ran into Izzy's burning house and the morning when she was found on the steps? Did Maggie really hear Hopey say "i love you"? If so does that mean when the phone rang before....
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