Today we have Charles Hatfield on Gilbert Hernandez's two new books, Marble Season and Julio's Day.
This morning, over breakfast, I read Gilbert Hernandez’s new book Julio’s Day, which I had just gotten the day before.
This evening, before dinner, I read Gilbert Hernandez’s new book Marble Season, which I had found waiting for me on the dining room table when I got home.
Crossing the synapse between these two lit my head up, like fireworks. In the stretch between the two of them, in the distance but also consistency between 2001 and 2013, is fresh proof of Beto Hernandez’s fidgety talent, his rare mix of raw provocation and affirming humanism, toughness and tenderness of heart. When it comes to Beto, the lightning keeps striking, and if it doesn’t strike exactly the same place twice, it does testify to the same divided genius. To read two new books by Hernandez in a day—and both of them self-contained and freestanding, unlinked to the elaborate continuities that shape his signature projects, Love and Rockets and the “Fritz B-Movie” series—this, to me, is a gift.
Elsewhere:
Michael Dooley on Stan Mack.
This is one beautiful Alex Raymond image.
Here's a process piece on the recent Lovecraft graphic novel reviewed here.
Padraig O Mealoid continues on the Alan Moore trail, this time with the end of Eclipse Comics and what happened to Miracleman.
Tom Spurgeon makes a case for the new Matt Bors book.
And here's a new Comics Books Are Burning in Hell from McCulloch, Mautner and (almost) Stone.
