(W/A/CA) Gilbert Hernandez

Palomar is the perfect entry into the works of critically acclaimed cartoonist Gilbert Hernandez and the still-ongoing Love and Rockets comic book series! It stars the inhabitants of a small Latin American town — long-suffering midwife/sheriff Chelo; Pipo, tomboy-turned-heartthrob; Carmen, wryer than her years; teen boys Heraclio, Satch, Augustin, Jesus, Israel, and Vicente, whose paths diverge and intersect over time; Diana and Tonantzin, sisters and polar opposites; and many other finely drawn and dynamic characters — whose already-tempestuous lives are roiled when Luba, an assertive single mother, moves there to set up a bathing business. Palomar is a selection from the first 50 issues (1985–1996) of Hernandez’s multigenerational saga, which has followed the lives and loves, adventures and horrors, of his signature characters, their children, and their children’s children — borne from a place where the mystical is quotidian and the quotidian is mystical — for 40+ years. These are the stories that forever changed the face (and the heart) of American comics.