Love and Rockets X/

After ten years spent in Palomar and the fantasy worlds of BEM andErrata Stigmata, Gilbert Hernandez brought it all back home with thissharp contemporary tale. This story, which ran under the simple title"Love and Rockets" in Love and Rockets from 1990 to 1992,takes us from plush Beverly Hills to the dangerous East side andintroduces us to a dizzyingly diverse cast of characters, including alowlife rock 'n' roll band, a "posse" of black youths, a ditzyHollywood mom and her spoiled son, a gay activist filmmaker and hisrebellious, half-Iraqi daughter, and a group of racist thugs whoseviolent attack on an older woman sets the plot in motion - as well asbringing in several older characters, including Palomar expatriates(and lovers) Riri and Maricela, the surfers from Blood of Palomar, and some special surprise guests from Birdland. Love and Rockets X does for contemporary Los Angeles what Robert Altman's Nashvilledid for that metropolis in the '70s - it's a superbly observed portraitof a city in decline, a character study of over twenty men and women, girlsand boys; it's a comedy and a drama; it's in short, Gilbert Hernandezat his very best!