Luba de los Santos

Luba is a central figure in Gilbert Hernandez's Palomar stories within Love and Rockets, a strong-willed, fiercely maternal woman who serves as the bathhouse operator — and later mayor — of the small Latin American village of Palomar, navigating complex family and community relationships.

Emerging from the richly human world of Fantagraphics' beloved Love and Rockets universe, Luba de los Santos made her catalog debut in 1992, a creation of the incomparable Jaime Hernandez. She inhabits a corner of comics that prizes emotional depth and literary ambition over capes and cosmic crises, sharing her stories across Luba, Luba's Comics and Stories, and the landmark Love and Rockets itself — a character compelling enough to anchor her own dedicated titles. In the company of characters like Rosalba "Fritz" Martinez, Ofelia Beltran, and Pipo Jimenez, she moves through a world of vivid, interconnected lives that has made the Hernandez Brothers' work a touchstone of the Copper and Modern Age. For readers who love comics as genuine literature, Luba de los Santos is exactly the kind of character that reminds you why this medium can be so extraordinary.