I've been following the work of the Hernandez brothers for nearly thirty years now, and I'm always glad when a new volume is released. That having been said, I'm about a year behind in reading this, and No. 3 is out already. Instead of the 32 page comics they used to release through most of the eighties, the brothers have reverted to the 100-page plus format of their earliest issues.

I remember Jaime's earliest Maggie serial, "Mechanix". In that story, teenage Maggie was an apprentice prosolar (rocket) mechanic, hopelessly in love with her handsome mentor, and living in a science fiction space opera backdrop. The mood of the Maggie stories eventually shifted from science fiction to day-to-day life in the barrio (sort of a hispanic-American, post high school Archie Comics). Maggie aged in real time and eventually became a matronly apartment manager.

In this volume and the last one, Jaime once again brings in fantasy elements. This is a no-holds-barred wild superhero grrl story, focusing on Maggie's friend Penny Century, the Faustian deal she made to get superpowers, and a few teams of brawling superhero women. As always, Jaime seems to dream up the storylines on the fly, and as always, they are beautifully drawn. This volume ends the super-saga in poignant fashion, and we're left wondering if we'll ever see Maggie and her friends again. Hopey has been MIA for years. What has become of her?

Gilbert's work always had two strains: the magical realist storytelling he began in his "Palomar" series, and his more experimental, dreamlike work. This volume has a little of both in the same story. A framing sequence about the making of an experimental film leading into a presentation of that film. I'm not sure, but I suspect that the character Killer is one of Luba's many offspring, or maybe even a grandchild.

Any back issues of the Brothers' work is well worth picking up. Note that they are full of "adults-only" situations, language, and depiction. These are not kids' comics. Jaime's work is represented in the huge "Locas" volumes and Gilbert's in the "Palomar" and "Luba" books. I highly recommend them. These represent some of the most important work done in comics in the last few decades. ( )

While I loved the first volume of Love and Rockets: New Stories I'm quite a bit less thrilled with this second installment. This has to do primarily with the fact that the contents of the first volume made a fairly convincing departure from territories previously explored by Los Bros Hernandez, but the second volume seems to do little more than stretch the same content with no additional ideas or artistic developments put into play. While Jaime Hernandez continues with his usual graphic excellence, the additional chapters of his "Ti-Girls Adventures" make for dull reading. And the two contributions from Gilbert Hernandez are just plain boring, reveling in the very private and impenetrable language that he has lost himself in over the last few years. One can only hope that this series will improve in future volumes; if it doesn't, it will make for a sad end to a pair of formerly brilliant careers in the comics. ( )