For the first half decade of Love and Rockets, Gilbert Hernandez focused on fleshing out his small Central American hamlet of Palomar. But eventually this became too restrictive for the kinds of stories he wanted to tell, and he created, in quick succession, two major standalone graphic novels. Beyond Palomar collects these two groundbreaking works, together for the first time. "Poison River" is a dizzying period piece often hailed as one of Hernandez's masterpieces. It traces the pre-Palomar childhood of Luba, her teenage marriage to gangster Peter Rio, the secrets behind her mysterious mother, all the way up to her subsequent escape and arrival in Palomar. This story introduces a number of characters and themes that occupied later issues of Love and Rockets (including Luba's mother Maria and her sinister guardian angel Gorgo), and is a riveting page-turner besides, with lots of sex, drugs, guns, politics, and women who can crack walnuts with their stomachs. "Love and Rockets X," set in the early 1990s (in the waning years of Bush I's post-Reagan hangover, with Gulf War I in the background), takes us from plush Beverly Hills to the dangerous east side and introduces us to a dizzyingly diverse cast of characters, including a lowlife rock 'n' roll band, a "posse" of black youths, a ditzy Hollywood mom and her spoiled son, a gay activist filmmaker and his rebellious, half-Iraqi daughter, and a group of racist thugs whose violent attack on an older woman sets the plot in motion as well as bringing in several older characters, including a couple of Palomar expatriates. Beyond Palomar is a wildly original diptych of graphic novels by one of the great cartooning talents of the last quarter century."

Celebrating its 25th anniversary in 2007, Love and Rockets is finally being released in its most accessible form yet: As a series of compact, thick, affordable, mass-market volumes that present the whole story in perfect chronological order. This volume will collect the second half of Gilbert Hernandez's acclaimed magical-realist tales of "Palomar," the small Central American town, beginning with the landmark "Human Diastrophism," named one of the greatest comic book stories of the twentieth Century by The Comics Journal, and continuing on through more modern-day classics. "Human Diastrophism" is the only full graphic novel length "Palomar" story ever created by Gilbert. In it, a serial killer stalks Palomar but his depredations, hideous as they are, only serve to exacerbate the cracks in the idyllic Central American town as the modern world begins to intrude. "Diastrophism" concludes with the death (the suicide, in fact) of one of Palomar's most beloved characters, and a postscript that provides one of the most hauntingly magical moments of the entire series as a rain of ashes drifts down upon Palomar. Also included are all the post-"Diastrophism" stories, in which Luba's past (as seen in the epic Poison River) comes back to haunt her, and the seeds are sown for the "Palomar diaspora" that ends this dense, enthralling book."

In his first book with Faber, Hernandez tells the untold stories of these American comics legends' youth, and portrays the reality of life in a large family in suburban 1960s California. Told largely from the point of view of middle child Huey - who stages Captain America plays and treasures his older brother's comic book collection almost as much as his approval - Marble Season deftly follows these boys as they navigate their cultural and neighborhood norms. Set against the golden age of the American dream and the silver age of comics, and awash with pop-culture references - TV shows, comic books, super-heroes and music -Marble Season subtly details how their innocent, joyfully creative play changes as they grow older and encounter name-calling, abusive bullies, and the value judgments of others. A coming-of-age story both comic and moving, it will have timeless resonance for children and adults alike.

Celebrating its 25th anniversary in 2007, Love and Rockets is finally released in its most accessible form yet: As a series of compact, thick, affordable, mass-market volumes that present the whole story in perfect chronological order. This volume collects the first half of Gilbert Hernandez's acclaimed magical-realist tales of "Palomar," the small Central American town, beginning with the groundbreaking "Sopa de Gran Pena" (which introduces most of his main cast of characters as children, plus the imposing newcomer Luba), and continuing on through such modern-day classics as "Ecce Homo," "Act of Contrition," "Duck Feet," and the great love story "For the Love of Carmen."

First there were three: Octavia, Charlotte, and Rosalyn, a trio of badass hit-women who picked up the slack when the going got too real for other so-called top-level assassins. But things happened. Octavia hung up her semi-automatic for a semi-lucrative kidnapping insurance scam. Charlotte chose an expensive Chardonnay, love, marriage and, until recently, a baby carriage. And Rosalyn? There's a lot of conspiracies, but according to the federal government, she's simply M.I.A. When a kidnapping hits too close to home, Octavia is forced out of retirement and back into the bounty-hunting business. Down two partners, she recruits her son Dominic and his boyfriend Taylor to aid and abet her in a semester of murder-based work study, where she'll teach them everything she knows (if she can get them to put down the video games, stop making out, and actually focus on the mission already). Can this dysfunctional modern family pull off the greatest mission in the history of the ASSASSINISTAS? Collects the complete miniseries, issues #1-6.

In Ofelia, the sisters, the kids, and the cousins are all settled comfortably in California after leaving Palomar in Luba and Her Family. Luba and her cousin Ofelia s relationship has always been fraught, but when Ofelia threatens to write a book about Luba, past memories, secrets, resentments, and pain resurface. Meanwhile, Luba s children genius Socorro, recently out-and-proud Doralis, and prickly Maricela show that a talent for trouble may be hereditary. Luba s sisters, Fritz and Petra, swap lovers (as usual), but . . . are Fritz and family friend Pipo sittin in a tree? These vividly drawn characters are charged with Hernandez s trademark complexity; they live, love, age, fight and die in this sweeping, multi-generational saga."

Gilbert Hernandez s sprawling family saga focuses on the United States, where newly immigrated Luba and her sisters, body-builder Petra and therapist/film star Fritz, find their families and friends lives becoming more and more intertwined. As the three sisters have memories of sweet youth, the next generation finds the spotlight: Luba s adult daughter Doralis emcees the proceedings in her role as mischievous host of a children s TV show, while Petra s little girl, Venus, has adventures with her aunt Fritz and her best friend Yoshio. At her mother s urging, Venus also writes missives to her fierce, one-armed cousin Casimira, who s back in Palomar. In these stories never before collected together Venus tells it like it is "

A woman comes to the U.S. from Latin America to escape her shady past, only to fall into a new shady life. After a go at the adult entertainment business, Maria marries a drug lord and her dangerous past is nothing compared to her new life in America. The drug lord s son, Gorgo, secretly falls in love with her and he watches over her like a guardian angel. Danger and corruption (and of course sex) drive the first half of this love story. Long-time Love and Rockets readers will find the storyline familiar... and that s because, in an Adaptation-style meta twist, Maria M. is actually the B-movie film adaptation of the life story of Luba s mother Maria, as previously seen in its real version in the classic graphic novel Poison River (available in the Beyond Palomar collection) starring Maria s own daughter playing her own mother. Confused? Don t be Maria M. will work perfectly on its own terms as the kind of violent, sexy pulp tale that Gilbert Hernandez has proven so adept at these past several years, and the source material for the story will just provide an extra layer of delight for the cognoscenti. Part two of Maria M. will be released in 2014."

It begins in the year 1900, with the scream of a newborn. It ends, 100 pages later, in the year 2000, with the death rattle of a 100-year-old man. The infant and the old man are both Julio, and Gilbert Hernandez s Julio s Day is his latest graphic novel, a masterpiece of elliptical, emotional storytelling that traces one life indeed, one century in a human life through a series of carefully crafted, consistently surprising and enthralling vignettes."

New Tales of Old Palomar is Gilbert Hernandez s much-anticipated return to the small Central American town of Palomar, more than a decade after his last Heartbreak Soup story. Originally released as a three-issue magazine series in the acclaimed international Ignatz format, New Tales Old Palomar is finally collected into one handsome book. All three issues deal with the classic characters of Palomar such as sweet Pipo, her sharp-tongue sister Carmen, sheriff Chelo, and the gang of boys who help start it all: studious Heraclio, tall and fey Israel, disfigured but good-natured Vicente, and girl-crazy Jesus and Satch. In the first story, Children of Palomar, mysterious, fast-moving thieves are stealing food from wherever they can grab it; Sheriff Chelo and some citizens do their best to solve this mystery, but nobody seems to be able to catch these bandits in action until Pipo puts her soccer-trained legs to work and goes after them herself. In the second, Gato, Soledad, Guero, Pintor, and Arturo go exploring a bottomless chasm and come face to face with... well, we won t spoil the surprise. The third and last story focuses on one of Palomar s most beloved characters, the gorgeous but troubled Tonantzin: Everybody in Palomar seems to take the supernatural with a grain of salt, but young Tonantzin is determined to uncover the mystery of the laughing baby that only appears to her, haunting her daily life. What is the baby s link to the giant stone idols that stand outside the small town...?"

Dig this scene Low-life drug dealer Dewey Booth has $200,000 that even-lower-lifes want. BLING Wes is a rock and roll loser that only wants to buy a club where nobody can tell him he can't sing or perform. WAILIN' He's known Dewey for years, but that isn't enough to get his dough. Wes needs help. Nala is an uber-stacked bombshell whose pleasure in life is to seduce and then humiliate men dumb enough to fall for her. HUSH HUSH For half the dough, she agrees to help Wes get Dewey's ill-gotten goods. Things don't go so well when a wily grifter from Wes's past shows up to complicate things. GULP Vincene is another troublemaker who enjoys wrecking people's plans and wants the Dewey dough, too. In the end, deadly fires ignite, heads literally roll, eyes are shot out and all Wes wants to do is sing in a rock and roll club. The Troublemakers is the second volume in a series of original graphic novels in which Gilbert Hernandez creates comics adaptations of movies starring or co-starring Luba's half-sister Rosalba "Fritz" Martinez from Love and Rockets. The first, the dystopian Chance in Hell (in which Fritz has only a bit part), was released in 2007. This hard boiled, pulp graphic novel will delight longtime Hernandez fans as well as provide a perfect introduction to newcomers to Hernandez's work."