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Book Cover for: Human Diastrophism: A Love and Rockets Book, Gilbert Hernandez

Human Diastrophism: A Love and Rockets Book

Gilbert Hernandez

Human Diastrophism is the fourth volume in The Complete Love and Rockets Library, and the second that collects writer-artist Gilbert Hernandez's main Palomar storyline, magical-realist tales of a small Central American town. It begins with the landmark Human Diastrophism. In it, a serial killer stalks Palomar -- but the murders only exacerbate the cracks in the idyllic Central American town that the outside world made when it began to intrude. Diastrophism'' concludes with the death of one of its most beloved characters. As a postscript -- one of the most hauntingly magical moments of the entire series -- a rain of ashes drifts down upon Palomar. Also included are all the post-Diastrophism'' stories, in which Luba's past (as seen in the epic Poison River) comes back to haunt her, and Hernandez sows the seeds for the Palomar diaspora that ends this dense, enthralling book. In addition to seeing Hernandez push the comics medium into greater artistic and narrative heights (along with contemporaries such as Chris Ware and Daniel Clowes), readers will see characters change as they age in real-time in stories that span generations and centuries.

Created between 1989-1995, these stories first appeared in the long-running (and ongoing) Love and Rockets comics series, also featuring work by Gilbert's brothers, Jaime and Mario. L&R has been called the greatest American comic book series of all time by Rolling Stone and a great, sprawling American novel by GQ. It broke ground with its craft and the casual intersectionality of its huge and diverse casts of nuanced characters (many of whom are LGBQTIA+) who live and have relationships in often-naturalistic settings and situations.

Book Details

  • Publisher: Fantagraphics Books
  • Publish Date: Jul 1st, 2007
  • Pages: 288
  • Language: English
  • Edition: undefined - undefined
  • Dimensions: 9.20in - 7.40in - 0.90in - 1.58lb
  • EAN: 9781560978480
  • Categories: LiteraryContemporary WomenLGBTQ+

About the Author

Hernandez, Gilbert: - Gilbert Hernandez was born in 1957 in Oxnard, California, and is considered one of the greatest living comics writer-artists in the world. In 1982, Hernandez co-created, along with his brothers Mario and Jaime, the ongoing, iconic, internationally acclaimed comic book series Love and Rockets, one of the greatest bodies of work the medium has ever seen. In addition to his work on Love and Rockets, its spinoffs, and side series, Hernandez has released a prodigious amount of original graphic novels and miniseries, such as Sloth, Bumperhead, and Marble Season. He also collaborated with Darwyn Cooke on The Twilight Children for DC. He was inducted into the Will Eisner Hall of Fame in 2017 and is the recipient of a Fellow Award from United States Artists and a PEN Center USA's Graphic Literature Award for Outstanding Body of Work. Hernandez lives in Ventura, CA, with his wife and daughter.

Praise for this book

"Love & Rockets has been American fiction's best-kept secret."
..."Love & Rockets is a high point in the comics form, conventional in idiom, but not comparable to any strips before it."
"If you've never heard of Gilbert and Jaime Hernandez, you've been missing out on two of the hidden treasures of our impoverished culture."
"I've never seen anything else in comics - I guess there might be something in literature - but in comics there's never been anybody that's touched what the Hernandez brothers have." -- Tom Spurgeon