This is another one of Hernandez's oddball side projects -- Love from the Shadows is not actually set in the world of Palomar and his other Love & Rockets stories, but it's the retelling of a fictional movie from that world, starring Hernandez's character Luba in a prominent role. (Clear?) It follows the similar graphic novels Chance in Hell and The Troublemakers as well as Speak of the Devil, which has an even more complicated relationship to Hernandez's usual fictional continuity. (If any alt-comicker ever goes full Crisis in his stories, it will be Gilbert Hernandez; he's always had a fascination for metafiction and a willingness to be as complicated as he can.)
So this particular story is meant to evoke a dark, elliptical indy movie -- made by the Hernandez-world equivalent of David Lynch, perhaps -- in which style is as important as substance, and the most important things are never actually said or shown. (Although there's more on-panel sex and nudity than probably any director could get away with.) There's a dysfunctional family -- aged, sour novelist widower father; promiscuous hitting-middle-age daughter; tormented gay nurse son -- a mysterious and vastly symbolic cave, religious scam artists, an odd near-future religious sect of Monitors, and the usual torment, betrayal, and death you'd expect from a small, serious movie.
The plot isn't the point, but the point is opaque -- after all, this is meant to be the print version of a non-existent movie, so the particular artistic point the movie could have made is not quite what the book can convey. Hernandez puts together compelling pages, and creates characters with intriguing quirks, but the whole thing feels more like an exercise than a creative work.
Blog Archive
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2013
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February
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- Read in February
- Fan-Bricking-Tastic!
- Love From the Shadows by Gilbert Hernandez
- Batman: Death by Design by Chip Kidd and Dave Taylor
- Basse Wickman solo en trio-upplevelse
- Carving Out a New Nook in the Market
- A Short Political Comment, In Re the US 2nd Amendment
- Reviewing the Mail: Week of 2/23
- Peanut by Ayun Halliday and Paul Hoppe
- Skåpmålarmusik del 10: Jim Hanft
- Free Matt Hughes!
- Impressing People Who Can't Do Math
- Oh, and the Nebulas, Too
- Diagram Prize Time Again
- Skåpmålarmusik del 9: Karla Bonoff
- Traveling by Map
- Borrowing E-Books
- Poseidon: Earth Shaker by George O'Connor
- The Murder of the Century by Paul Collins
- Reviewing the Mail: Week of 2/16
- Skåpmålarmusik del 8: Latin Quarter
- Incoming Books: February 16
- Skåpmålarmusik del 7: Eva Hillered
- Skåpmålarmusik del 6: Spirit of the West
- Ve Haff Vays Uf Making You Buy Kindles!
- The Colonial Marines Battle Cry
- For My Conservative Readers
- Find Them In the "Goddamned Partner" Section at Ha...
- In Honor of the Day
- In Sickness and in Health, In Debits and In Credits
- The Times Is ON IT
- What Work For Hire Looks Like
- Some People I Know May Need This
- Reviewing the Mail: Week of 2/9
- Richard Thompson ännu glödande
- Three Parts Dead by Max Gladstone
- Calvin & Hobbes IRL
- Ännu en chans
- My New Look
- Najafi Sells Bookspan to Pride Tree
- Reviewing the Mail: Week of 2/2
- Distributed Egosurfing
- The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Re...
- Musiken som smutsig industri
- Hey Kids, Comics!
- Worries Assuaged
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February
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