Life Drawing: A Love and Rockets Collection Review

Life Drawing: A Love and Rockets Collection

Fantagraphics

Jaime Hernandez

Mar 12, 2025 Web Exclusive By John Paul Bullock

If you’re somehow new to Love and Rockets, I’m very excited for you. For over 40 years, the Hernandez Brothers have created one of the most fascinating, multi-layered bodies of work in sequential art history. And while the massive amount of material they’ve generated might seem a little intimidating, one of the unique features of L&R is just how easy it is to step into the world Gilbert, Jaime, and Mario have built as a tag team.

Life Drawing: A Love and Rockets Collection is a perfect entry point for anyone who’s recently discovered this groundbreaking series. It features Jaime’s work and is primarily focused on the character of Tonta, a nexus whose personal journey intersects with many of the other major storylines. Through her perspective readers get a different angle on significant life changes for Maggie, Vivian, Ray, and Hopey. Tonta and Maggie have a very specific connection. And, although they are separated by age and experience, the two women share some parallels that make Life Drawing function as both the continued adventures of beloved characters and a standalone book that provides a satisfying climax and conclusion of sorts.

If you’re already a fan then you could probably guess that Life Drawing continues to deliver complex interpersonal dynamics, bittersweet character moments, and the occasional, although now less frequent, twist toward the bizarre, silly, and surreal. Keep your eyes peeled for a particularly excellent moment in the first fifty pages featuring a forest spirit. Life Drawing contains comics originally serialized in Love and Rockets Vol. III, Nos. 7-8, and Love and Rockets Vol. IV, numbers 1-2 and 6-15. It moves forward from the 2019 collections Is This How You See Me? and Tonta. And it is absolutely jammed with Jaime Hernandez’s gorgeous, Dan DeCarlo-influenced art presented in glorious black and white. (https://www.fantagraphics.com/products/life-drawing-a-love-and-rockets-collection)

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