TITLE: The Complete Love and Rockets vol. 20: Dicks and Deedees
YEAR: 2003
PAGES: 94
COMPANY: Fantagraphics Books
By Jaime Hernandez
Back in 1982, brothers Gilbert, Jaime and Mario Hernandez created a comic book series known as “Love and Rockets”, one of the first comic books in the alternative comics movement of the 1980s.
With each stories from each brother created independently from each other (primarily featuring the works of Gilbert and Jaime), Gilbert would focus on characters in the fictional Mexican village of Palomar while Jaime focused on a social group in Los Angeles known as the Locas stories, primarily focused on Latin-Americans and friends Maggie and Hopey.
While collecting the “Love and Rockets” comic books, all the trade paperbacks and books may seem like it may cost an arm and a leg in order to understand the story, fortunately, Fantagraphics Books are re-releasing “Love and Rockets” omnibus to make things easier for readers to understand the storyline.
But with “The Complete Love and Rockets”, these volumes were the original collected stories that were released in the 2000’s, so you really don’t have to purchase these now unless you are a collector or saw the booklet cheap.
I absolutely love “Love and Rockets” and so, you will see me reviewing quite a number of them on “My Comic Book Journey”.
“The Complete Love and Rockets vol. 20: Dicks and Deedees” is a volume that focuses on the original six “Locas” friends: Maggie Chascarillo, Hopey Glass, Izzy Ortiz Reubens, Terry Down, Daphne (Daffy) Matsumoto and Penny Century (Beatriz Garcia).
The stories primarily focus on Maggie and Hopey during a time in their lives when they were in their teens and in their 20-30’s. Stories with brief summaries are as follows:
- Election Day – What happens when Hopey works as a volunteer at a polling place and Maggie comes to visit (after Maggie promised to go Colorado with Hopey to a funeral, but didn’t and Hopey ended up going alone. So, things are a bit tense between the two friends).
- The Race – Maggie’s dream about going on a race with friends but decides that she will explore the area and ditch the race, since she feels that she’ll never win the race, so why even race at all.
- To Be or Not To Be Announced – A few short one page stories.
- Everybody Loves Me, Baby – A story of how a teenage Maggie and Tony Chase met, how they got married and why they divorced.
- Bay of Threes – A story of how a young Beatriz Garcia (Penny Century) met with the horned, wealthy individual H.R. Costigan and how they would cross each others path as Beatriz got older.
- The Frogmouth – A story from Ray Dominguez’ perspective about Doyle Blackburn, Vivian Solis (Velvet) a.k.a. “Frogmouth” and Reno.
The stories featured in this story were among one of the better Maggie and Hopey stories and focuses a lot on Maggie’s failed marriage and the challenge of Maggie and Hopey’s friendship. If anything, Maggie and Hopey stories are among the best of “Love and Rockets” and I enjoy both the “Palomar” stories by Gilbert Hernandez and the “Locas” stories by Jaime Hernandez and if anything, both brothers have their own distinct style of artwork and stories.
But their approach to characters, situations and interactions are engrossing. I absolutely enjoyed this book and it’s one you find “The Complete Love and Rockets vol. 20: Dicks and Deedees” fairly cheap these days online.