Love and Rockets: The First Fifty

Gilbert and Jaime Hernandez are now recognised as two of the greatest cartoonists in the history of the medium - award-winning, world-renowned, critically acclaimed. But in 1982 when the first issue of Love and Rockets came out, they (occasionally working with their brother, Mario) were two young, struggling, unknown cartoonists who were bucking the dominant comic book trend of costumed characters and adolescent content with intimate, complex, humane, novelistic stories told in comics form. Love and Rockets has appeared in a variety of formats over the years and continues to this day, but the original 50-issue run represents a milestone in comics history. Fantagraphics is celebrating and honouring the 40th anniversary of Love and Rockets and the debut of the Hernandez''s'' first published comics with a gigantic eight-volume slipcase reprinting each issue in a facsimile edition. Their organic body of work is available in a series of scrupulously and logically organised graphic novels, bu