Cartoon: Reading ‘Catcher in the Rye’ Today

Go to: The New York Times, by Gilbert Hernandez

Loverboys

By Gilbert Hernandez

Gilbert Hernandez made his mark early in the alternative comics market of the 1980s with his stories centering around Palomar - a fictional village located somewhere in Latin America. For over a decade, he weaved a complex tapestry of melancholic tales about small town love and intrigue using Palomar’s unconventional inhabitants. Hernandez has more recently moved away from these longform stories to shorter, more self-contained comics. But Loverboys will feel familiar to fans of Palomar. There’s the small town setting. A varied ensemble of individuals linked to each other by who they slept with, or who they want to sleep with. Unspoken rivalries bubbling beneath the surface. Voluptuous feminine figures with a mysterious past. An enigmatic supernatural element haunting his cast and informing their actions. All this is drawn in his signature cartooning style. But at barely eighty pages, Hernandez has distilled these components down to their bare essentials. The result is a story that tamps down on its more flamboyant soap opera aspects to exhibit greater emotional restraint. Not that Hernandez isn’t already an intelligent storyteller, but this narrative seems slightly more calculated.

The restraint is somewhat surprising given that the book’s front cover captures two of its principal characters in an intimate moment. But much of the sexual activity takes place off panel. And there’s even less outright violence. So much of the storytelling in Loverboys is economical. Hernandez’s art is perhaps even more starkly minimalist, if that’s even possible. His traditional page layouts, simple perspective, and uncluttered panel compositions function as an simple stage for his cast, which are always designed to be visually eclectic. Actually, this is a huge cast for such a comparatively short comic, so not all of them can receive equal attention. But the reader can easily spot several of them in the background either casually observing or surreptitiously eavesdropping on the foregrounded characters. This all serves to reinforce the gossipy nature of a tiny community.

The minimalist visuals are complemented by the book’s spare dialogue. With the exception of the establishing pages used to introduce the fictional setting of Lágrimas, there’s very little exposition to describe the actions of the cast. Almost nothing is revealed of the inner lives of the minor characters. But the observant reader will notice some of them going through their own individual arcs. Clues are found in their actions, facial expressions, and offhand remarks. Even information about the central characters is divulged gradually: one crucial detail which helps to illuminate their motivations is delivered in a casual aside sometime past the halfway point.

At the heart of the story is the May-December romance of young lothario Rocky and his former substitute teacher Mrs. Paz, and the effect this has on Rocky’s little sister Daniela, who happens to be Mrs. Paz’s current student. The relationship and its eventual dissolution isn’t in itself all that remarkable. What is compelling is how Hernandez is able to map how it creates ripples throughout Lágrimas. As the town’s resident pretty boy, Rocky’s romantic interest in the elderly Mrs. Paz sparks a considerable amount of interest. And as their relationship begins to flounder, Mrs. Paz is suddenly eyed by a random collection of singles - from the unlovable loser who’s never dated anyone, another would-be womanizer, a pair of creepy twins, to even a lonely schoolgirl. Through separate interactions with each of them, some of them sexual, Mrs. Paz in turn either embarrasses, humiliates, or enables them. Hernandez handles these scenes with his characteristic mix of empathy for his cast’s frailties while delighting (even sometimes indulging) in human sensual pleasures. Only this time his approach is a little more compressed.

Loverboys may not contain the narrative intricacy, sustained world building, or emotional highs of his earlier work. That’s not likely. But there’s something to be said when a talent like Gilbert Hernandez tackles new formats. If this is a lesser work, it’s still more accomplished than most  comics being currently published. Or to quote one of the characters in the book, “I think it’s beautiful.”

Cartoon: Wall of Shame

Go to: The Village Voice, by Gilbert Hernandez (via Wim Lockefeer)

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Sean T. Collins lists the greatest graphic novels of all time.

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Charles Russo deciphers Bruce Lee vs. Wong Jack Man.

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Love from the Shadows

by Gilbert Hernandez
cover: Steve Martinez
design: Alexa Koenings

A meta-fictional conceit of Gilbert Hernandez’s standalone “Fritz” stories is that Rosalba “Fritz” Martinez, one of the more popular recurring characters from his Palomar series, once starred in a bunch of godawful B-movies. By adapting these movies into a growing collection of graphic novels, Gilbert can capitalize on the pre-existing appeal of this tragic, top-heavy bombshell of a figure while working on the pretense that these are new characters operating under completely different circumstances. Fritz has long been notorious for her outrageous combination of high intelligence, a voluptuous physique, light skin, voracious sexual appetite, and speaking with a “high soft lisp”, which has been alternately treated by the people around her as either endearing or deeply annoying. But she’s also been a victim of abuse at the hands of her past sexual partners, numbing the pain with bouts of heavy drinking. Love from the Shadows exploits many of those traits in Fritz’s most bravura performance and a perverse, violent, bizarre tale. I can’t really say if this is a good comic, let alone if the movie it’s pretending to be based on is worth watching. But it is strangely compelling.

And as an apparent rebuke to those fans who’ve dismissed Gilbert for his particular propensity for drawing buxom women, the graphic novel’s cover is his most confrontational yet. Painted by Steve Martinez, the pulpy, lurid quality of the bikini-clad pin-up lounging on a beach next to the ominous shadow of an unseen individual hovering behind her promises to supply all the cheap thrills expected of a clunky matinee movie, not to mention satisfy the reader’s prurient interests. It probably helps catch the eye of the prospective customer given how it's largely unconnected to the events within the book itself.

The story within certainly contains copious amounts of violence and sex, though they feel grafted on top of a grim and elliptical psychological drama. It begins with a forlorn Fritz standing inside an empty house. She slowly wanders from room to room, examines her breasts in front of a mirror, calls her dad on the phone, only to be cruelly rejected by him. It’s a simple action sequence drawn with Gilbert’s usual black and white minimalism. But one that’s fraught with emotional weight due to his mastery of composition, time, facial expressions and body language. Every line exudes both anguish and desperation from the character. But the scene also conveys just how Fritz’s own sensuality seems to weigh heavily on her entire existence. It’s practically impossible to distinguish her history from the character she’s now supposably playing.

Fritz responds to her father’s rejection by calling on an attractive young man. But as they walk to her house, she’s accosted by a group of mysterious, visor-wearing individuals called “monitors”. “How come you look like that? How come your skin is like that? How come you talk like that?”  they ask while blithely invading her personal space. After they reach her house, Fritz engages her impassive partner in vigorous love-making. But as she tries to engage him in conversation, he quietly leaves when she goes to the kitchen to prepare a meal for him.

What happens afterward is difficult to summarize and makes little sense except as some kind of fevered dream. Fritz spots the monitors outside her house and flees to the basement, only to enter a mysterious cave. when she emerges on the other side, she’s somehow acquired a new identity (complete with new hair color) as a woman named Dolores. Actually, it’s even more complicated as Fritz also plays Dolores’ brother Sonny and their estranged father, who happens to be a famous novelist. At one point Dolores becomes involved with a trio of spiritualist hucksters, Sonny has a sex change operation and impersonates Dolores. A ghost delivers a prophecy which Dolores fulfills in the most brutal manner. There are two recurring motifs: the monitors continue to hound her like a creepy Greek chorus. And the cave continues to lure characters in with promises of secret knowledge and in some cases, drive them insane. Gilbert draws it as an inky black abyss. An absolute void. Could any other metaphor be so infuriatingly on-the-nose while being so open to interpretation? Death, the Underworld, Nirvana, the Subconscious Mind, Wisdom, the Wellspring of Creativity, the Primordial Universe, the Heart of Darkness. Or maybe it’s just a game Gilbert is playing with the reader to see what they can come up with?

If so, it is an abstruse game. Gilbert is a prodigious storyteller whose powers have diminished very little. But he’s made a sharp left turn away from the humanism and diverse cast of characters found in his Palomar stories towards something a little more austere, baffling, less compassionate.

Julio's Day

by Gilbert Hernandez

Gilbert "Beto" Hernandez is one of the comic medium's true humanists. Few of his colleagues can rival his ability to spin complex, sprawling sagas that are both deeply moving and full of genuine sympathy for an often flawed humanity. At just a hundred pages, Julio's Day is one of his most accessible works. But all the hallmarks of his personal style are there: The timeless quality, the fantastic bubbling just below the surface, a love for the rural, the occasional bursts of non-gratuitous sex and violence, the interconnected stories, the multicultural milieu, the multigenerational family saga, strong and independent women, fully rounded gay and minority characters, and of course all told in his minimal but expressionistic black and white cartoons.

Beto accomplishes this by breaking up the narrative into vignettes which last at most half a dozen pages. The story begins with the day of the titular character's birth to a working class Latino family in small-town America at the turn of the century. What follows are glimpses into his life as seen through various moments as he grows to adulthood. While much of his early childhood focuses on his immediate family, the cast naturally expands with his own evolving circle of friends, neighbors, acquaintances, random strangers, and fur flung relatives. Julio himself in not a particularly proactive individual, so the attention in the latter part of the book increasingly shifts to the various people who move in and out of his life. In fact, Julio is often emotionally and sexually repressed. He's the dull contrabass that hums steadily while other people around him experience the highs and lows: happiness, tragic loss, hatred and love. Some even leave to explore the wider world, and return to recount  their varied experiences. As the focus pans back and forth between the characters and time moves forward in an unpredictable manner, what emerges is a highly contrapuntal representation of 20th century America, refracted through the lives of the citizens of one town. While never directly shown, the faint rumble of significant events can be vaguely felt like the gathering storm clouds that dominate the stark landscape.

And this is a surprisingly poignant story. The breezy pace doesn't allow the reader to tarry long with any one individual. In theory, each vignette could have been explored in greater detail. But the brevity touches on certain emotional points while deliberately leaving much to the imagination. Various connections are implied - Sexual denial being a recurring theme with Julio's family. It metastasizes in the form of the perverse behavior of one uncle who is eventually driven out of town. This leads years later into a quest for vengeance. And yet those events also lead to one member of Julio's extended family finding redemption and finally breaking free of those familial constraints.

It's a humble victory, but it's made more powerful by the absolute nothingness that bookends this economic but deeply affecting work.

The Art of Los Bros Hernandez

Los Bros Hernandez art gallery

Warning: NSFW

Speak of the Devil

For a series produced by Gilbert Hernandez, Speak of The Devil arrived in stores with little fanfare - around the same time of the publication of Chance in Hell. Both works are based on the conceit that they are comic book adaptations of films that a certain Palomar character played a role in. While this meta-fictional layer is not required to understand the story, it can affect the readers' perception of the work. While Chance in Hell mimics more high-minded arthouse cinema, Speak of the Devil is more of a sleazy, exploitative noir thriller. Certainly the stark black and white aesthetic, the plot-driven story, the terrible dialogue, the supporting beatnik characters, the suburban anomie, the widescreen panels used as establishing shots suggest a movie from the 60s or 70s, despite some anachronistic details. The sexual fetishism depicted would have been perceived as rather explicit several decades ago, contrasted with the far more graphic violence, accurately portrays the conflicting, hypocritical, contemporary double standards towards censoring sex and violence.

A neighborhood peeping tom wearing a leering devil mask takes particular interest in watching the sexual antics of businessman Walter and his younger second wife Linda Castillo. At first concerned enough to report to the police after catching him peeping through their window, Linda's exhibitionist side later gets the better of her. The peeping tom is however Walter's teenage daughter from his first marriage Valentina, a talented competitive gymnast. Her own sexually unresponsive boyfriend Paul soon develops an interest in the peeping tom. Their mutual sexual obsessions lead the three down a dark path of murder and more illicit behavior.


There's not a whole lot to be said about the story without revealing more of the plot other than to say that all of main characters come to a tragic end. There's even a kind of twist ending to suggest the evil perpetuated by them continues on. For all the successful reproduction of film noir conventions, this is still a comic book created by one of medium's greatest living practitioners. Hernandez paces the story well and reveals the twists effectively through six-part pamphlet serialization. Needless to say his visuals are brilliant. While the constraints of space and the b-movie narrative limit the complexity of this work, his rough, cartoony, but evocative style captures the repressive atmosphere of the period and the disturbing sexuality the characters delve into. The black costume Valentina dons to conceal her feminine features is a nice visual effect. The unblinking eyes of the Devil mask, mirrored in the eyes of later murder victims, is particularly disturbing.


While Speak of the Devil is fairly straightforward in serving-up its sex and violence, something a bit more emotionally ambiguous and lyrical emerges as the characters come closer to their inevitable doom. For all the perversity perpetuated by Valentina and her cohorts, this is still a story about young people caught-up in powerful emotions they don't quiet understand, and ultimately undone by them.