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  1. #1
    Spectacular Member Penoy's Avatar
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    Default I need help regarding Love and Rockets and Cerebus

    I would like to know where to start with which collected edition first. Which ones are the most recent prints anyway? Any body want to lead the way for these 2 titles please?

    Love and Rockets similar to Daniel Clowes' work? Whats Cerebus about? I have only encountered the character in an issue of Spawn.

  2. #2
    Mighty Member LordJulius's Avatar
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    The only Cerebus collections are still the so-called "phone books", i.e. 300-600 page tpbs. They're quite cheap, though.

    How to describe the series? Well, it started off as a riff on Conan, but after a while it became much more sophisticated, dealing with politics, religion and society in general. Then it was also one of the funniest books of all time, imo. Later on, after the Church & State arc, it became even more philosophical and somewhat less humorous (as well as controversial at times) as it included fictionalised biographies of people like Hemingway, Oscar Wilde or F. Scott Fitzgerald.

    Many people (like myself) begin with the second collection, "High Society", as it was at that point that the series really began to hit its stride. The first volume is for the most part somewhat crude, concerning both the art and the stories. If you want to skip volume one as well, you can just look up some of the stories in there that introduce major characters on Wikipedia. This should be sufficient to delve into vol. 2 first.

    EDIT:

    Oh yeah, and the Cerebus "phone books" were what led to the so-called "Cerebus Effect" - now better known as "trade waiting": it was the first series, back in the early 90s, where a large portion of fans stopped buying single issues and waited for the collections instead.
    Last edited by LordJulius; 01-27-2017 at 02:45 PM.

  3. #3
    Fantastic Member aaltomuoto's Avatar
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    Love and Rockets is quite different from Clowes' work, although there are some similarities in the shorter stories. The easiest way to read love & Rockets is by getting the Love rockets Library SC's. THere's two main separate storylines: "Locas" (by Jaimie Hernandez, about a bunch of latino punks and their lives) and "Palomar"/"Luba" (by Gilbert Hernandez, about a fictional South American village and it's inhabitants). There is also a volume that collects all the short stories from the first run of Love and Rockets (#1-50) which is called "Amor Y Cohetes". This one also collects all the stories done by the third Hernandez brother, Mario.

    Best way to start is probably to pick up the first volumes of both "Palomar" and "Locas" ("Heartbreak Soup" and "Maggie the Mechanic" respectively) to see if it's your thing. The "Locas" volume is pretty rough in the beginning (It starts out as a soft of sci-fi story and gradually phases out all the sci-fi elements to focus more on the relationships between the characters) but "Palomar" is strong right out of the gate.
    Last edited by aaltomuoto; 01-28-2017 at 03:43 AM. Reason: zpelling

  4. #4
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    Quote Originally Posted by LordJulius View Post

    Oh yeah, and the Cerebus "phone books" were what led to the so-called "Cerebus Effect" - now better known as "trade waiting": it was the first series, back in the early 90s, where a large portion of fans stopped buying single issues and waited for the collections instead.

    interesting. Wasn't aware of that...

  5. #5
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    "Cerebus Effect" refers to a series that starts off as very humor driven to the point of being a comedy that slowly introduces more and more dramatic elements until it becomes a very serious drama with little humor.

    "Trade Waiting" refers to consumers who do not follow the individual entries of a series but wait until a larger collection of the series is available. So instead of buying the monthly issues of the comic, they wait until the collection is released. For a TV show, it would be a person who does not watch the weekly episodes but gets the DVD season set.

    They are two separate issues, but both apply to Cerebus.

    A word of warning on reading Cerebus. Dave Sim, the writer and main artist, has been criticized for misogynistic themes. See the wikipedia entry on Cerebus that discusses this in more detail. As the themes became more overt, Sim lost a sizable portion of his readership.

  6. #6
    Spectacular Member Penoy's Avatar
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    thank you for your input fellas! i am looking forward to starting properly on these 2 highly regarded titles.

  7. #7
    Mighty Member LordJulius's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Rincewind View Post
    "Cerebus Effect" refers to a series that starts off as very humor driven to the point of being a comedy that slowly introduces more and more dramatic elements until it becomes a very serious drama with little humor.

    "Trade Waiting" refers to consumers who do not follow the individual entries of a series but wait until a larger collection of the series is available. So instead of buying the monthly issues of the comic, they wait until the collection is released. For a TV show, it would be a person who does not watch the weekly episodes but gets the DVD season set.

    They are two separate issues, but both apply to Cerebus.

    A word of warning on reading Cerebus. Dave Sim, the writer and main artist, has been criticized for misogynistic themes. See the wikipedia entry on Cerebus that discusses this in more detail. As the themes became more overt, Sim lost a sizable portion of his readership.
    Nope. "Cerebus Effect" = "trade waiting". What you mean is the so-called "Cerebus syndrome".

    Cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cerebu...Cerebus_Effect

  8. #8
    Incredible Member Dick Grayson's Avatar
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    I got into Love & Rockets last year thanks to the FCBD issue and fell hard for it. This page was really helpful in explaining the reading order and how best to get the material:

    http://comicpusher.blogspot.com/2013...efinitive.html

    As already said, start with Maggie the Mechanic and Heartbreak Soup and see if either are your thing, then go from there.

  9. #9
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    What Cerebus and Love and Rockets have in common is definitely skipping the first volume of their original trade runs.

    Don't taint yourself with others opinions about Cerebus, just delve into it with an open mind. It does start rough for about half of the first "phone book" and Dave Sim finds his footing. If anything, it does get self-indulgent towards the latter third. I suppose reading it in issues with the letter columns was more in-the-moment engaging discussing themes and ideas presented. My first reading was in the phone books without prior knowledge.

    What's convenient about the original L&R materials reprinted, is that you can focus your attention on a singular Hernandez story in one or two volumes instead of jumping back and forth in the magazine size trades. It's wonderful material.

  10. #10
    Spectacular Member Azrael's Avatar
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    The first volume of Locas (Maggie the Mechanic) is very rough, but it introduces a lot of characters and storylines that appear later on, so I recommend not to skip it. From the second volume an on the series is amazing.
    Last edited by Azrael; 02-10-2017 at 02:37 PM.

  11. #11
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    Do the cerebus books get reprinted regularly? I've noticed some are only available on the secondary market at really high prices

  12. #12
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    Quote Originally Posted by Ben11345 View Post
    Do the cerebus books get reprinted regularly? I've noticed some are only available on the secondary market at really high prices
    They do -- DCBSservice dot com has Volume 3 "remastered" trade solicited for a May release.

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