More than 25 years after they self-published the first issue of Love and Rockets, Gilbert Hernandez and his brother Jaime are taking a different kind of chance with their signature series. Fantagraphics will be relaunch Love and Rockets—again—now calling the series Love and Rockets: New Stories, this time as an annual 112-page trade paperback collection priced $14.99, starting in September. The new series will abandon the traditional periodical format altogether.
It’s not the first time Los Bros. have taken a chance with the series—they originally sent the book to the The Comics Journal, a news and critical journal also published by Fantagraphics, back when L&R was just a fanzine. "I remembered an advertisement for the second Ramones album," recalled co-creator Gilbert Hernandez. "It had all the raves in one column and all the pans in the other column, so we figured we'd try that approach. [We figured] if The Comics Journal hated it, we'd pitch it as ‘the comic that The Comics Journal hated!’"
Not only did TCJ like the book, but Love and Rockets has gone on to tremendous critical acclaim and has been credited with launching the alternative/indie comics movement of the 1980s. Jaime and Gilbert said that the decision to relaunch the series as a trade paperback annual is based on where Love and Rockets sells best—general bookstores. Indie comics have a higher profile than ever before in bookstores, but mainstream superhero fare is still the bread and butter for most comic book stores, since comics shops get a bigger wholesale discount for ordering titles nonreturnable.
"I know of a retailer who doesn't order the books that he doesn't get the higher discount on, and that's how he stays in the black—you can't fault him for it," said Vito Delsante of Manhattan comics retailer Jim Hanley's Universe. "If his customer base isn't looking for superhero stuff, they have to go somewhere else."
Fantagraphics' publicity director Eric Reynolds concurred. "The discount structures that have existed over the past decade with the exclusive arrangements that [comics distributor] Diamond has with DC and Marvel make it difficult for the other publishers to get interested in selling directly to comic book stores."
Delsante, who also writes for DC Comics, said that Hanley’s sells sells plenty of copies of L&R regardless of format, but noted that the store's large selection of indie material is the exception rather than the rule in most comics shops. (Reynolds confirmed this—periodical comics are the one format in which Fantagraphics has seen year-to-year declines).
Moreover, non-superhero books have generated much interest in a mainstream book market in which the sales of book format comics and comics-related books are consistently rising, irrespective of genre. So the Hernandez brothers and Fantagraphics are hoping Love and Rockets: New Stories will put new Hernandez material directly into the hands of a faithful readership that hardly ever scrounges in the long boxes.
It's also a chance to create a new and more reader-friendly book. "I'm going to minimize serialization," Gilbert vowed. "I'm not saying I'm going to limit my subjects, though. I'm going to be a little more experimental visually, as well." The brothers will split up the pages 50/50, with a little give-and-take in case one brother has a 75-page brainstorm. And while long-established characters may appear, they won't hog the spotlight. Gilbert will stay away from his fictional town of Palomar for the time being and Jaime said that while his iconic characters, Maggie and Hopey, will show up, they won't necessarily be the main focus of the stories.
"They'll still be around because in my world—my 'Locas' world—people are still coming in," explains Jaime. Ironically, some of those people are superheroes—the book features a new story about Maggie’s friend Penny Century and how she gets super-powers.
"It's a completely new superhero adventure," Reynolds said happily. "I can't think of anything he's done that's further from his own continuity."
