Product Review

Maggie deals with the past and Hopey moves into the future in the latest complete Love and Rockets book.

As Jaime and Gilbert Hernandez continue to delight readers new and old with the continuing adventures of their characters in the annual Love and Rockets: New Stories, Fantagraphics continues to collect their earlier stories in these fat, handy, and inexpensive collections.

In this batch of €œLocas€ stories by Jaime Hernandez from the pages of Love and Rockets Volume II (picking up where 2010€s Penny Century collection left off), an older and wiser Maggie faces down her old demons and the €œGhost of Hoppers€ in a full-length graphic novel (which also introduces one of Jaime€s greatest recent characters, Vivian the €œFrogmouth,€ the near-psychotic bombshell).

Meanwhile, the ever-feisty but maturing Hopey (her Spanish birth name giving this collection its title) transitions from tending bar to teaching kindergarten (while still juggling a complex love life), and the final quarter of the book shows Maggie€s lovable ex Ray Dominguez being dragged into the aftermath of a grisly murder thanks to his falling for the €œFrogmouth.€ 248 pages of black-and-white comics