LOVE AND ROCKETS The Sketchbooks

Fantagraphics published two sketchbook volumes in 1989 and 1992; now, this massive, oversized book collects both PLUS a trove of other rarely-seen artwork. Both Gilbert and Jaime Hernandez developed their skills in the pages of Love and Rockets, and as quickly as any artists ever have. But they built up to their 1981 self-published debut with years of experiments, fan art, zine illustrations, early short comics, and gig posters, and continued to work out in personal sketchbooks after establishing themselves as the preeminent cartoonists they became. Includes good girl art, nudity and adult material. Gilbert and Jaime Hernandez’s mastery of comics is seen on every page of the thousands of pages of Love and Rockets they’ve drawn over the last 40 years. Here, for the first time in three decades, see the work they put into becoming those artists. It's a very impressive compilation, with page after oversized page of cool and fun images, dating back to their earliest work. I've always been most fond of Jaime's early Love & Rockets work, when Maggie was still a spaceship mechanic and young and svelte. It's a joy to see her here in her earliest incarnation and with art new to me, or at least not seen in 30 years! - Bud