Luba - ISBNLookup.com

Booklist

“Starred Review. After closing the chronicles of life in the fictional Latin American village, Palomar, Hernandez followed the town’s matriarch, Luba, to America...This handsome edition collects more than 10 years’ worth of stories, and if these latter-day adventures lack the poetic grandeur of the Palomar tales—the North-of-the-border saga reads more like a freewheeling, sexually explicit telenovela—their welcome compilation lends much-needed cohesion to the sprawling continuum they constitute.”

The Onion A.V. Club

“Just like Heartbreak Soup and Locas, Luba is hard to put down, and Beto’s art gets better as it gets more experimental... there’s tons of good material here, and the humongous format can’t be beat in terms of bang for your buck....There’s no denying that Hernandez’s comics reflect one of the highest peaks the comics medium has yet achieved.”

Publishers Weekly

In this expansive sequel to 2003's Palomar, Hernandez gives readers a peek into the lives of the inimitable Luba and her extended family now living in modern-day Southern California. Often taking center stage is the snarky Venus, the young daughter of Petra, one of Luba's recently discovered half-sisters. Obsessed with romance comics-and in love with the much-older owner of a comic and record store-Venus tries to make sense not only of her own life but her family's complicated dynamics. Her aunt Fritzi, another half-sister of Luba and sister of Petra, is a lisping psychotherapist who goes through boyfriends like candy and embarrasses Venus by always speaking Spanish. Luba herself, working in a local immigration office, is still torn up over the disfigurement of her husband (who's still back in Central America) when he tried to save a woman from self-immolation. The backbone of the family, and also its Achilles heel, Luba is a larger-than-life personality who jumps off every page, whether she's the focus of the segment or just a background player. Hernandez collects over 100 stories here, ranging from graphic novellas to single-page episodes, with his usual dizzying cocktail of sexual intrigue, humor and soap opera-style angst. (June)