New Comics Day

A slow week for new comics as far as I was concerned. I ended up spending a whopping $4.50, minus my 10% subscriber discount, and plus tax. But it's not like they had to wrench teh money away from me at the shop because the only book worth picking up was:

Love & Rockets Vol. 2, #14 (Fantagraphics, $4.50)
Ah yes, the good ol' reliable Hernandez Bros. This issue is another good slice of human drama with a touch of the bizarre, surreal, comical, and fantastical they're known for. Jaime continues his "Day by Day with Hopey" storyline, giving us Thursday and Friday, while Beto pushes forward with "Dumb Solitaire" and an extra dark installment of "Julio's Day," which is surprising, considering how disturbing this particular storyline usually is. It's like "Palomar" with all the life-affirming deference to love and determination stripped away. If "Palomar" explored the growth of it's characters, for better and worse, "Julio's Day" dwells on the depraved, petty, and outright vicious side of the equation. Luckily, Jaime is there to balance out the book, notably the scene of schoolgirlish excitement between Maggie and Hopey as they spy on Maggie's superheroine neighbor in the middle of the night. It's good to see the spotlight more on Hopey, after the extended "Maggie" storyline of the first 10 issues, although it is odd to have a "Locas" storyline that takes their apartness as a starting point, a status quo. It does give a slightly different perspective on the two as individuals, and opens up some more territory to explore, I suppose...