A deluxe, giant hardcover that compliments brother Gilbert's "Palomor" book of last year (another top-ten choice), "Locas" collects Jaime Hernandez' stories starring his enduring characters Maggie and Hopey. Their relationship — perhaps the most developed and complex in the medium's history — has been evolving in the pages of the Hernandez brothers' comic "Love and Rockets" for over twenty five years. Bound together, these stories follow not just the residents of Jaime's fictional Mexican-American California neighborhood known as "Hoppers," but also follow Jaime's own exponentially growing powers as one of our premier comix creators. Hernandez' skills at creating unforgettable characters that live in a slightly surreal world (one character grows and shrinks intermittently) are exceeded only by his sense of how to compose a perfectly balanced panel of light and shadow. Though all the stories contained in "Locas" have been in print separately for years, collecting them together in "Locas" creates what is nearly a Bible of comix art.
Come fly with us, and Leo, through the best (and worst) of 2004. Tops in the cinema this year include Scorsese's Howard Hughes biopic The Aviator. Elsewhere, Deadwood was good TV, and a Strange tale fascinated readers.