Comics / Spotlight

Bye-bye, Luba

By Leroy Douresseaux
December 29, 2005 - 22:10

Luba #9

LUBA #9-10

FANTAGRAPHICS BOOKS
CARTOOIST: Gilbert Hernandez
24 pp., B&W, $3.50 ea.

A few months ago, Gilbert Hernandez ended his comic book series, Luba. Hernandez began the series shortly after he and his brother, Jaime Hernandez, closed their long-running comic book series Love and Rockets with #50 (1981-1996). That, of course, was the famous magazine-sized version of L&R, the series that arguably launched alternative comics before the word “alternative” became a term used to describe culture that was not created by corporations (although it later became just that).

Los Bros. decided they were going to continue their comics separately. Gilbert birthed Luba and a companion series entitled Luba’s Comics and Stories. Jaime launched the sadly missed Penny Century. However, the Direct Market and many readers were unfriendly to the new Los Bros. comix, with many retailers and fans either being ignorant of the new books’ existence or simply refusing to accept Luba and Penny Century in the place of L&R. So in 2001, Fantagraphics and the brothers re-launched Love & Rockets, Vol. II as a standard-sized comic book.

However, the prolific Gilbert continued producing the comic book series, Luba, chronicling the life, adventures, and misadventures of his famed matron, Luba, her two half-sisters, Petra & Fritz, and Luba’s daughters: Maricella, Guadalupe, Doralis, and Socorro (who all varied greatly in age). There were also a host of spouses, grandchildren, nieces, lovers, and ghosts in Luba’s extended family. Luba was the central figure in Gilbert’s Palomar stories. Palomar was a fictional “south of the border” town (I assumed it was either in Mexico or Central America), and Fantagraphics collected all the Palomar stories from the original Love and Rockets into a very popular hardcover edition entitled Palomar: The “Heartbreak Soup” Stories.

Luba #10

Luba the series was a sequel of sorts to Palomar, a continuation of Luba’s story – this time focusing on her new life in the states. Even after Luba the series ended, Gilbert continues to chronicle the life of other characters in Luba’s extended “family,” characters that for the most part have always figured prominently in Gilbert’s work. Luba’s Comics and Stories, the Luba spin-off, continues, and Luba made an appearance in issue six.

What I’ll miss is the exact thing that I’ve mentioned in previous reviews of Gilbert’s work: the large ensemble cast, his novelistic approach to storytelling, and the simple, yet highly evocative art. Yes, sometimes, it is quite maddening to read Gilbert’s work. There are so many characters that I have to keep up with if I truly want to understand the stories. Not only are there a lot of characters, they all have such wildly divergent personalities and motivations. It’s not uncommon to find a work of fiction that boasts of an ensemble casts (films, drama, fiction, etc.), but for the most part, such an ensemble comes down to having characters in which all of them have the same motivation. That wasn’t (and still isn’t) the case with Gilbert’s work. Sometimes, it could be difficult to learn just what each cast member of Luba wanted, but whatever it was, the getting was going to cost everyone else a lot.

I wish that the comics oriented Internet had made a bigger deal of Luba’s demise, but it’s understandable that much of it had to focus on the “Countdown to Crisis” and exactly what was going to happen in “House of M.” Still, it’s not like Gilbert’s work is lost. Much of it is available in book form, and though many of us have a tendency to chase that next issue – always eagerly awaiting new comics day, we shouldn’t forget the actually books that hold some of our treasured comix memories. These books are the graphic novels, trade paperbacks, hard cover tomes that collect the storylines or story arcs of the past that are worth keeping in the forefront of the medium, though they may be decades older than new comics.

In that way Luba won’t be lost to us. I think it’s sad that Luba is discontinued, but as a long time Love & Rockets fan who has seen how disinterested the DM has been to Los Bros., at certain times, I may be being a bit too sentimental. The beat of Los Bros. surely will go on in spite of market turbulence, and I’ll be there.

Mr. Charlie #78 says that all Los. Bros. Love and Rockets books and spin off titles are available directly from the publisher at fantagraphics.com.

Read my movie reviews at NEGROMANCER.

Last Updated: August 31, 2023 - 08:12