Day Three: The Ladies of Love and Rockets

The first graphic novel my friend was exposed to was Love and Rockets. She got it at the library, and the book was possibly confiscated and returned before she could finish. Her age numbered single digits. My friend has always been ahead of everyone else (I didn't begin to read until the bros. drew a 2001 cover for Punk Planet), as I didn't pick up the series until it was brought back to life by its writers and creators the Hernandez brothers. (Who allow readers to follow the characters in real time.)

In a ruralish area of Maryland the stories of L&R were exciting. They looked at tough, brilliant women who were unafraid and exciting. They were witty and unapologetic punks, and though I'd read racy comics before, I'd never met anyone—in real life or on the page—like Margarita Luisa "Maggie" Chascarrillo and Esperanza "Hopey" Leticia Glass, two "on again off again" lovers in the punk scene. They are "sharp-tongued" and adventurous, and at one point, Maggie "becomes a world-travelling mechanic who goes on science-fiction flavored adventures in the early issues."

The cast of the series are diverse. There is also a "hammer-wielding, sexually promiscuous, no-nonsense" mayor with many children and lovers, college students, a stigmata sufferer, and comics lovers.

Choosing Love and Rockets on day three makes me feel like I'm giving away the best celebration too early. Even if the characters are from men and two-dimensional, I feel like they exist, in three dimension on the other side of the country.