Love and Rockets #31
☆ Be the first to review + Add to your collection — Join freeLove and Rockets #31 (December 1989) marks the simultaneous debut installment of two of Gilbert Hernandez's most ambitious long-form works: the opening chapter of 'Poison River,' the sprawling origin story of Luba tracing her life from birth through Latin American political upheaval and a teenage marriage to gangster Peter Rio, and the first episode of 'Love and Rockets X,' a densely populated, Altmanesque Los Angeles ensemble piece that deliberately abandons the magic realism of Palomar in favor of a blunt social novel about race, class, and sexuality. Together, these two serials—running side by side in the same magazine—announced a new level of structural ambition for alternative comics, pushing the graphic novel's capacity for non-linear narrative and panoramic social portraiture. On Jaime Hernandez's side of the book, the issue continues the 'Locas' cycle with stories that deepen the Hoppers milieu at precisely the moment those characters had matured beyond their punk-scene origins. The issue thus serves as a threshold moment in the first volume of L&R, where both brothers were simultaneously attempting their most formally challenging work to date within a single shared magazine.
In "Las Monjas Asesinas," Gilbert Hernandez crafts a striking, character-driven tale as Peter encounters the intense, enigmatic teenaged Luba for the first time. The story unfolds with quiet urgency, tracing the sudden, dramatic turn in Peter’s life as he takes Luba away from her family and into a marriage that feels both inevitable and deeply uncertain. With his signature blend of emotional precision and surreal detail, Gilbert Hernandez illustrates the issue’s raw, intimate tone, while Jaime Hernandez’s cover captures the story’s haunting, off-kilter energy.
In "Las Monjas Asesinas," Maggie’s disastrous audition for Hopey’s band leads the two on an unexpected night out, where they stumble into an artsy party and cross paths with Maya, Ray’s ex-girlfriend. The story captures a quiet moment of connection and tension, grounded in the familiar rhythms of friendship and unspoken history.
In "Poison River Chapter 3," Peter meets the fierce and guarded teenaged Luba, drawn to her instantly after she defends herself with a hammer. Without hesitation, he cuts ties with her past, settling her family’s debts and taking her away—beginning a life together that feels sudden, intense, and utterly irreversible.
In "Love and Rockets X (part one)," Jo and her friends Kristen and Amber set off on a mission to track down the British band Love and Rockets, chasing a dream that blurs the line between fandom and reality. As the group navigates the quiet streets and shifting dynamics of their neighborhood, Steve and Gerry take Riri to her temporary home, where Maricela waits—another thread in the story’s unfolding rhythm.
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We Buy Collections ▸History
Published in December 1989 by Fantagraphics Books, issue #31 sits deep in the Copper Age run of Love and Rockets Vol. 1 (1982–1996), a series that Gary Groth and Fantagraphics had championed since picking up the brothers' self-published debut in 1982. Gilbert Hernandez had been building toward 'Poison River' for years—the Palomar character Luba had appeared since the early issues, but her pre-village backstory was almost entirely unknown—and he chose to serialize it in raw, un-episodic form beginning with this issue, running through #40. Simultaneously, he began 'Love and Rockets X,' a story set entirely apart from Palomar and named after the British band whose name the series had long shared. The issue is formatted in the magazine-sized black-and-white format that distinguished L&R from standard pamphlet comics throughout its first volume run, with a cover by Jaime and a back cover by Gilbert.
Trivia · 8 facts
- Published December 1989 by Fantagraphics Books; 32 pages, black and white, mature readers.
- Cover art by Jaime Hernandez depicting Maggie and Hopey; back cover art by Gilbert Hernandez.
- Contains the first installment of Gilbert Hernandez's 'Poison River,' the origin story of Luba tracing her earliest life alongside her mother Maria, father Eduardo, and cousin Ofelia—characters who populate much of the run of Poison River as serialized through issue #40.
- Contains the first installment of Gilbert's 'Love and Rockets X,' an ensemble L.A. narrative centered on a garage rock band of the same name (members include Igor Valdez, Scott the Hog, Sean Ogata, Rex Walker, and El Fontanel); the story ran through issue #39 and was later collected as the tenth volume of The Complete Love & Rockets (1993).
- Contains Jaime Hernandez's 'Las Monjas Asesinas' and 'Spring 1982,' a Locas-continuity story in which Doyle Blackburn, fresh out of jail, struggles to stay straight while back in his old environment, alongside other Hoppers characters including Lily Rivera and 'Litos.
- The 'Spring 1982' story also features Peter Rio meeting the teenaged Luba for the first time—an early-chronology flashback bridging the Locas and Palomar universes.
- Stories from this issue were later reprinted in: Flies on the Ceiling (Complete L&R Vol. 9, October 1991), Love and Rockets X (Complete L&R Vol. 10, July 1993), Poison River (Complete L&R Vol. 12, September 1994), Love and Rockets Library Vol. 3: The Girl from H.O.P.P.E.R.S. (2007), Love and Rockets Library Vol. 6: Beyond Palomar (2007), and the 40th Anniversary Collection The First Fifty (Fantagraphics, 2022).
- Multiple printings of this issue exist; MyComicShop notes that second through fifth printings were produced for most issues in the first-volume series.
Cast · 39 characters
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Reprints
Reprinted in Epix #1/1991 (81) (1991), The Complete Love & Rockets #9 (1991), The Complete Love & Rockets #9 (1991), House of Raging Woman - A Love and Rockets Graphic Novel #[nn] (1992), Ten Years of Love and Rockets #[nn] (1992), The Complete Love & Rockets #10 (1993), The Complete Love & Rockets #10 [First printing] (1993), The Complete Love & Rockets #12 (1994), The Complete Love & Rockets #12 (1994), Locas #[nn] (2004), Locas #2 (2006), Love and Rockets Library #[3] (2007), Love and Rockets #3 (2007), Locas, elles ne pensent qu'à ça #[nn] (2009), Speedy Ortiz dør #[nn] (2011), Love and Rockets: The Covers #[nn] (2013), Fantagraphics Studio Edition: Jaime Hernandez #[nn] (2017), Love and Rockets: The First Fifty: The Classic 40th Anniversary Collection #[5] (2022), Locas: Maggie y Hopey #4
Key issues in Love and Rockets
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