372 LOVE AND ROCKETS
a vast cast of complexly related characters, centered around the buxom matriarch
Luba. Gilbert (frequently signing as “Beto”) has constructed especially ambitious and
lengthy narratives, including the major sequences “Human Diastrophism” and “Poison
River,” both intricately organized explorations of the lives of individual characters
within larger social and historical structures. Gilbert’s stories make demands upon
their readers, relying upon unexpected transitions and quietly recalling past events as
his narrative moves forward (or, as in “Poison River,” shifts to the past, revealing the
origins of later events); yet he also provides frequent moments of gentle comedy, often
involving the many children of Palomar, whose responses to their often bizarre and
magical world are recognizably natural.
Both of the brothers’ narratives, often supplemented by shorter pieces, veer between
harsh realism and audacious fantasy, which in Gilbert’s case has often been favorably
compared to the magic realism of modern Latin American literature. Both are adept
at drastic shifts in tone, and both take advantage of the status of their works as inde-
pendent comics to depict the active sex lives of their characters (with Gilbert’s perhaps
showing more regular abandon than Jaime’s). Th e narrative range in their stories is
matched by their artistic skills: Jaime’s adult characters resemble actual people (with
amusing echoes of Dan De Carlo’s version of the Archie characters Betty and Veronica),
but he tends to represent children in “cartoonish” styles indebted to earlier kids’ com-
ics, with Hank Ketcham’s Dennis the Menace an oft-noted infl uence. For comic eff ect,
his attractive characters may be briefl y distorted with techniques borrowed from ani-
mated cartoons. Gilbert’s drawing is less realistic that Jaime’s, yet more detailed, and
more likely to erupt into disturbing, surrealistic images. Especially in their longer nar-
ratives, both have developed sophisticated means of moving from panel to panel, fully
exploring the spatial and temporal possibilities of the form: complex transitions allow
them to trace the lives of their characters out of chronological sequence, often with
resonant implications across time for the multigenerational stories each tells. Early on,
both brothers relied on a good deal of expository text to narrate their stories, but their
mastery of the narrative potential of precisely sequenced images developed quickly,
and many of the most eff ective moments in their work are now wordless (though their
major characters remain energetic talkers).
Between the fi rst and second volumes of Love and Rockets, Gilbert and Jaime created
works both derived from and deviating from their main storylines. Th eir desire to break
free from the worlds they had created is understandable, but works like Jaime’s Whoa
Nellie! (three issues, collected 2000) may require readers as fascinated with female
wrestling as the author; he eventually returned to his original cast and setting, allowing
Maggie, for instance, to confront the diffi culties following a divorce in volumes like Ghost
of Hoppers (2005). Gilbert’s work outside of his usual territory, in a volume like Fear of
Comics (2000)—compiling material from his miniseries Tr u e L o v e (six issues, 1996–97)
and guest appearances elsewhere—is more diverse but suggests obscure in-jokes with
little access for readers. His major work (aside from graphic novels unrelated to Love
and Rockets) following the fi rst series of the comic books concentrated again on Luba
