Love and Rockets #5
☆ Be the first to review + Add to your collection — Join freeLove and Rockets #5 (January 1984) is a structural pivot point for Fantagraphics' flagship alternative series: it is the first issue to run at the shorter thirty-six page count and the first to be scheduled bimonthly, the production format the series would hold for the next twenty-five issues. On the story side, it delivers a cluster of character debuts that would prove enduring — Licha and Mrs. Glass enter the Locas strand while Casimira de los Santos, Doralis, and Archie Ruiz join Gilbert Hernandez's Palomar cast — expanding two of the most ambitious long-form character rosters in American alternative comics. The issue also demonstrates Gilbert's willingness to compress fictional time radically within a single serialized arc: Palomar characters age years between one issue and the next, a technique that would become one of the series' defining storytelling signatures and a direct influence on later literary cartoonists.
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We Buy Collections ▸History
The series had been self-published by the Hernandez brothers in 1981 before Gary Groth of Fantagraphics offered them a publishing deal after the company received their self-produced copy; Fantagraphics republished the title beginning in 1982. By issue #5, Gilbert and Jaime Hernandez were functioning as fully independent contributors to the same anthology, each controlling their own cast and world without editorial interference from the other — Jaime chronicling the Southern California punk milieu of Maggie, Hopey, and their circle, Gilbert building his magic-realist Latin American village of Palomar. The bimonthly frequency change noted in the issue's indicia (corroborated by Amazing Heroes #40's on-sale date) reflects the growing commercial confidence Fantagraphics placed in the series by early 1984.
Trivia · 8 facts
- Published January 1984 by Fantagraphics Books; on-sale date corroborated by Amazing Heroes #40.
- First issue to establish the series' standard 36-page count, a format held for most of the remaining run.
- First issue published on a bimonthly schedule, which was maintained officially through issue #30.
- First appearances (Locas strand, by Jaime Hernandez): Licha and Mrs. Glass (the latter in flashback).
- First appearances (Palomar strand, by Gilbert Hernandez): Casimira de los Santos, Doralis, and Archie Ruiz.
- First appearances (short-story strand): John Rhodes and Melba Rhodes.
- The Palomar story in this issue deliberately jumps forward in time from the previous issue — Maricela advances from infant to teenager, Israel and Vicente become adults, and Pipo is now married — an early example of the brothers' real-time aging approach.
- Stories from this issue were collected in Las Mujeres Perdidas (Complete Love & Rockets Vol. 3, 1987), Palomar: The Heartbreak Soup Stories (2003), Love and Rockets Library #2 – Heartbreak Soup (2007), and the 40th Anniversary facsimile boxed set Love and Rockets: The First Fifty (2022).
Cast · 24 characters
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Reprints
Reprinted in Pox #6/1985 (1985), Pox #7/1985 (1985), Mechanics #3 (1985), Heartbreak Soup #[nn] (1987), Love & Rockets #[nn] (1987), Heartbreak Soup and Other Stories #[nn] (1987), Love & Rockets: Short Stories #[nn] (1987), The Complete Love & Rockets #3 (1987), Den skrattande solen #[nn] (1988), The Complete Love & Rockets #4 (1988), Love & Rockets #2 (1988), Epix #8/1988 (52) (1988), Rakkautta ja raketteja #[nn] (1990), The Complete Love & Rockets #3 [2nd Edition] (1990), The Best Comics of the Decade #2 (1990), Love and Rockets #2 (1991), Palomar: The Heartbreak Soup Stories (A Love and Rockets Book) #[nn] (2003), Locas #[nn] (2004), Palomar #1 (2005), Locas #1 (2006), Love and Rockets Library #[1] (2007), Love and Rockets Library #[2] (2007), Love and Rockets #1 (2007), Love and Rockets #2 (2007) + 7 more
Key issues in Love and Rockets
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