Is This How You See Me?: A Locas Story

by Jaime Hernandez

Overview

In the follow-up to the LA Book Prize-winning The Love Bunglers, the Locas get the band back together—literally.

Maggie and Hopey leave their significant others at home and take a weekend road trip to go to a punk scene reunion in their old neighborhood. Threaded throughout are flashbacks to 1979, during the formative stages in their lifelong relationship, as the perceived invincibility of youth is juxtaposed against all of the love, heartbreak, and self-awareness that comes with lives actually lived. Serialized over the past four years in Love and Rockets: New Stories and the new comic book series, Is This How You See Me? collects Hernandez’s unsentimental, long-form masterpiece together for the first time.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781683961826
Publisher:	Fantagraphics Books
Publication date:	04/02/2019
Series:	Love and Rockets
Pages:	96
Sales rank:	580,876
Product dimensions:	8.80(w) x 11.00(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Jaime Hernandez was one of six siblings born and raised in Oxnard, California. His mother passed down a love of comics, which for Jaime became a passion rivaled only by his interest in the burgeoning punk rock scene of 1970s Southern California. Together with his brothers Gilbert and Mario, Jaime co-created the ongoing comic book series Love and Rockets in 1981, which Gilbert and Jaime continue to both write and draw to this day. Jaime’s work began as a perfect (if unlikely) synthesis of the anarchistic, do-it-yourself aesthetic of the punk scene and an elegant cartooning style that recalled masters such as Charles M. Schulz and Alex Toth. Love and Rockets has evolved into one of the great bodies of American literary fiction, spanning five decades and countless high-water marks in the medium’s history. In 2016, Hernandez won the prestigious Los Angeles Times Book Prize for his graphic novel, The Love Bunglers. In 2017, he (along with Gilbert) was inducted into the Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame, and, in 2018, he released his first children’s book, the Aesop Book Prize-winning The Dragon Slayer: Folktales from Latin America. He is a lifelong Angeleno.

Editorial Reviews

★ 03/18/2019

Hernandez explores the tensions between idealized young love and comfy mature reality in this powerful follow-up to The Love Bunglers. The saga of punk lesbian lovers Maggie and Hopey has been unfolding for more than 30 years in the Love and Rockets series, and this masterful episode gives new perspective on their relationship. In the present day, the now middle-aged Maggie and Hopey are in committed relationships to others, but a road trip to their hometown for a band reunion turns predictably dramatic. Old characters and feelings emerge, not always wanted nor appropriate. As the gang relives their youth for one night, flashbacks show that what they remember as a fun-filled hangout was a drug-fueled crash pad run by a slovenly pedophile, and the “good old days” were often confusing and lonely. What could be an ordinary tale is elevated by Hernandez’s incomparable art, which subtly reveals the progression of time on his characters, from Maggie’s evolving punk fashions to postmenopausal Hopey’s glasses, rendering them achingly real to readers who’ve grown up alongside them. While longtime fans will discover extra levels of joy and regret in this installment, even those who pick this up as their introduction to the series will be moved by its tale of growing older without necessarily growing up. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly

"A must-read for even the most casual Love and Rockets fan."

Toronto Star

"Love and Rockets [is] the rare pop cultural artifact that renders Latinas not as archetypes, but as rich and profound human beings full of messy contradiction and ambivalence."

LA Times

"Another transcendent contribution to the Love and Rockets canon."

Arkansas Democrat Gazette

"A poignant reintroduction to two beloved characters and their long-standing relationship."

The New Yorker

"This is an aching graphic novel about regret and growing older, and the ability — or inability — to confront the past."

The New York Times

"Hernandez is beloved by fans for creating complex, strong women who drive the narratives of his 'Locas' stories. Is This How You See Me? is an ideal 'Locas' entry point."

Chicago Tribune

"Love and Rockets has created a community of misfits filled with as much anger as warmth, with as many mistakes as wisdom, and with as much sadness as joy. That full spectrum is embodied most beautifully in [protagonists] Maggie and Hopey, and Is This How You See Me? reinforces it perfectly."

PopMatters

"A new volume of Love and Rockets, the best American comic book series of all time, is always good news."

Austin-American Statesman

"This book is full of innocence and experience, punk haircuts, middle-aged moshing, old movies, cigarettes and bruised hearts, all sketched out in black and white pen lines that throb with emotion and desire and anger and pain and resignation and acceptance."

Herald Scotland

"A moving story about the lives of two longtime friends."

The Guardian

★ 10/07/2019

Since 1982, the legendary Hernandez brothers—Gilbert, Mario, and Jaime—have been producing the groundbreaking alternative comic series "Love and Rockets." This newest collection, continuing Jaime's "Locas" stories, originally serialized in 2015–16, features a large (and mostly Chicano) cast, and catches readers up with main characters Margarita "Maggie" Luisa Chascarrillo and best friend (and sometimes lover) Esperanza "Hopey" Leticia Glass, as they take a train trip to a punk rock reunion concert. Now middle-aged, Maggie and Hopey revisit their roots in the punk scene while coming to terms with their present lives and relationships, including Hopey's marriage and parenthood with another woman, as well as their enduring (and complicated) feelings for each other. Longtime readers of the series will be rewarded with insights into the rich evolution of these complex characters, while the reunion plot device and flashbacks of Maggie and Hopey as teenagers in 1979–80, along with the snappy, reminiscence-laced dialog, make it a near ideal entry point for the uninitiated.

VERDICT Beautifully drawn, humorous, bittersweet, and poignant, this important chapter in the "Love and Rockets" universe, which stands as a self-contained graphic novel in its own right, is essential for most collections, especially those carrying the other books in the series.—Michael Dudley, Univ. of Winnipeg Lib., Man.

Library Journal