Heartbreak Soup and Other Stories

ISBN: 9780930193348

定价: 30.00

内容简介

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As we are informed so often in the media of late??? the New Comics are here. Over the last couple
of years??? enough genuinely interesting titles have sprung up from the generally mundane and
moribund mass of the comics mainstream to provoke rumors of a renaissance. The comic strip
seems to be teetering on the verge of both a new mass acceptance and a qnantum leap in terms
of quality. And yet??? if we look through the material under discussion??? leaving aside the hype
and adrenaline??? what do we really find? We find a few super-hero/fantasy titles in which the
quality of writing and graphic artistry has been refined to a standard well above the admittedly
low standards of that particular genre. That isn t to take anything away from the accomplish-
ment of a work like Dark Knight??? or??? God knows??? Watchmen. Rather??? it s an attempt to put
them in perspective: They are very good super-hero comics. The novelty of what is such an
apparent contradiction in terms has probably been responsible for bringing a lot of the popular
critical attention and subsequent influx of new readers that comics have enjoyed of late??? but
novelty seems a fickle phenomenon to hang the aspirations of an entire medium upon. Simply
put??? the vast potential audience for comics that allegedly waits out there cannot be expected
to endlessly endure the same procession of capes and masks that the semi-addicted and thus
more forgiving hardcore comic book reader has accepted over the past 40 years. Whatever con-
temporary nuances we might choose to update the super-hero s basic wardrobe with??? at the end
of the day we still have a super-hero comic??? with all of the limitations that term implies. If comic
books seriously hope to establish themselves amidst the media monsoon of the 80s and 90s???
they must make the eftort to go beyond such artificial boundaries. They must stake out new
territories with a breadth more suited to the demands of the times.
In my opinion??? when all the dust and the flavor-of-the-month furor have been allowed to settle???
one of the names most likely to emerge as a genuinely innovative force within the field is that
of Gilbert Hemandez??? author and artist of this current volume and part of the breathtaking fam-
:ily enterprise that is Love and Rockets along with equally talented siblings Jaime and??? less fre-
quently??? Mario. When this black and white anthology title burst like a signal flare over the comic
book landscape a few short years ago??? its impact was profound and immediate. Deliberately
\"ayoiding the proven??? popular??? and profitable content of the teen-age super-hero team books???
~l-???ove & Rockets has never been one of the industry s best selling titles??? but it has remained con-
slstenly amongst the very best reading that the medium has to offer. The material within is
i~ithout exception intelligent??? stylish??? and charged with a raw visceral impact that other media
~0nly occasionally provide. Above all??? the work in Love & Rockets rewards the attentions of
???a???more serious and mature reader because it is challenging??? and nowhere lnore so than in the
work collected in this volume~
In Heartbreak Soup??? Gilbert Hernandez has produced a comic strip which for its effect depends
???Upon an entirely different set of principles than those usually applied to mainstream American
.comics. Even more than brother Jaime??? who to a degree revels in reworking tile icons and sym-
bols of comic book trash culture in his \"Locas\" stories??? Gilbert is drawing upon sources which
to the traditional comic book tan must seem alien and obscure. In his use of solid black and in
!he kinetic fur)??? of his characters it s possible to see the influence of the Japanese manga cartoon-
Ists at work. Elsewhere??? the boldness of his compositions ew)kes the current crop of European
bande dessinee merchants in its use of open space. Somehow??? these diverse sensibilities are
then brought to bear upon the everyday events ofa sntall and impoverished Mexican communi-
ty??? the end result being a strip that is certairdy the most emotionally powerful and perhaps also
the most skillfully written offering currently available.
For its subject matter??? Heartbreak Soup focuses unblinkingly upon the lives of people who
are painfully ordinary and??? in a confic book marketplace dominated by mutants??? man-nmchines???
and martial-arts-mercenarms??? even mundane. It lives gs
~ - ??? ?????? presents a s or)??? /e where he lives and doiu ???s
~1 even the most minor backgrot ld characte s beco ne st enerossi???m in th~.i -t;??? ??? m??? g
- ~. ?????? g .e._ re..ec .???~???sclx a-
tlOn tnat the idea of there being sortie heroic \"nlain ch~.u aclers\" lbr the strip to revolve around