Palomar: The Heartbreak Soup Stories

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.