Love & Rockets to Become Annual Book

Starting in summer 2008, the Hernandez Bros. Love & Rockets will no longer be published as a traditional comic book but rather as a all-original graphic novel, Love & Rockets Volume 3. The new format will comprise at least 100 pages of all new Love & Rockets stories, evenly split between creators, Gilbert, Jamie (and sometimes Mario) Hernandez. The change was inspired by the popularity of the 2007 repackaging of Love & Rockets Volume 1, in which the original series was divided into seven highly successful graphic novels, the seventh Amor Y Cohetes seeing release in June 2008. Fantagraphics sales director Greg Zura elaborates that the format change will allow Love & Rockets to reach a large untapped market:

"We wanted to be able to reach those readers who aren't near a comic shop with, specifically, the new Love & Rockets material, and we wanted it to be available through Amazon.com and similar on-line book-selling services. Moving to a "spine" format gives us this option."

Love & Rockets was first published in 1981 and was highly influential in inspiring the alternative comics movement of the 1980's. Notably, the Hernandez Bros. have two separate popular naratives, with Gilbert's "Palomar" telling the story of a fictional village in Latin America, and Jaime's "Hoppers 13" following the lives of a group of Mexican-American California teenagers.

The Fantagraphics blog has released a number of exclusive images for the new LR collections. Here are a few collected below:


"The Search for Penny Century," pages 1 & 2 by Jamie


A second "Penny Century" page in progress.

The first volume of Love & Rockets Vol. III will premiere in San Diego in July 2008.

-Jon