Love and Rockets, Vol. 17: Fear of Comics

From Gilbert Hernandez, the acclaimed co-creator of Love & Rockets, comes Fear of Comics, a collection of short stories penned with Beto’s signature surrealistic and often experimental style (along with good doses of sex and humor ). A number of seemingly absurd stories in Fear of Comics can be read as existential dialogues between Hernandez’s ego and id, including “Peripeteia,” featuring a woman and her anthropomorphic jack-in-the-box, Bolo Cereal, both of whom are attended to by miniature, flying “love gremlins.” The two debate the existence of God amidst the gremlins, who serve as living embodiments of their faith, ebbing and flowing in the light of their masters’ consciousness. Fear of Comics spotlights the full range of Hernandez’s talent. Other stories include “All With a Big Hello,” “Roy,” “Heroin,” “Glorified Magnified,” “She Sleeps With Anybody But Me,” and “Shout Ramirez and Her Very Best Friend, Dinky,” which includes an appearance by the aforementioned love gremlins. One of the last stories, “Abraxas,” curiously blends elements from earlier, seemingly unrelated stories, with characters from “Spirit of the Thing” visited by ten-story-high versions of the love gremlins. Fear of Comics collects for the first time the very best of Hernandez’s short fiction from the pages of his New Love comic book series, and 8 New Love covers, as well as stories from Zero Zero, rare Vortex Comics stories, and a piece from the Goody Good #1