Synopsis
Interwoven stories track the lives of the residents of a fictional South American town.
Notes on This Title
The Heartbreak Soup Stories were initially published alongside Locas, a series created by Gilbert’s brother Jaime Hernandez, under the title Love and Rockets. While there is crossover between these series, they can be read separately. The Heartbreak Soup Stories were later published independently, first in a 2003 omnibus, then in three “Love and Rockets Library” collections, starting in 2007.
There are two sequel series which follow the characters established in The Heartbreak Soup Stories: Luba and New Tales of Old Palomar.
Awards
1986 Kirby Award for Best Black & White Series (Love and Rockets)
1989 Harvey Award for Best Continuing or Limited Series (Love and Rockets)
1990 Harvey Award for Best Continuing or Limited Series (Love and Rockets)
Reviews
Starred Review: “In 1983, Hernandez started writing and drawing short stories in Love and Rockets about a little central American town called Palomar and the interconnected lives of its inhabitants. The “Heartbreak Soup” stories, as they were called, established his reputation, and this mammoth, hugely compelling book collects the first 13 years’ worth of them. The earliest stories in the book owe more to magical realism and Gabriel García Marquez than to anything that had been done in comics before. But in later pieces, like the harrowing “Human Diastrophism” and “Luba Conquers the World,” Hernandez’s style is entirely his own: brutally telegraphic (he can capture an entire emotionally complex scene in a single panel, then imply even more by abruptly cutting to the middle of a later scene), loaded with insight about the bumpy terrain of familial and sexual relationships, swinging wildly in tone between suffocating darkness and sunny charm. His characters have enormous, tangled family trees, and he gradually unfolds their histories: there are some plot developments he sets up a decade or more in advance. And for all the bold roughness of his drawing style, Hernandez is a master of facial expression and body language. He tracks dozens of characters across decades of their lives, and their ages and their distant family resemblances are instantly recognizable, as are their all too human dreams and failings.” (Source: Publisher’s Weekly)
Interviews
Guernica: “Gilbert Hernandez: I Saw My Neighborhood as the World“