Throughout history, fiction has provided us with some of the world's great romances, from Romeo and Juliet to Scarlet and Rhett, Bogie and Bacall to Rick and Ilsa, Lancelot and Guinevere to Westley and Buttercup.

Add to that list Maggie and Hopey.

The post-punk pair of mixed-up bisexual lovers and the incredible cast of characters who surround them are the center of an incredibly rich, highly detailed storyline written and illustrated by Jaime Hernandez. Set for the most part in Hoppers, a small, fictional Mexican-American town in southern California, the stories collected in Locas are drawn from a few decades' worth of Love & Rockets. The long-running dramatic comic, published by Fantagraphics, features the work of the talented Hernandez brothers, Jaime, Gilbert and sometimes Mario.

Now, Fantagraphics has pulled the Maggie and Hopey stories together into one large, omnibus edition titled Locas. And, while I'd read these stories in previous Love & Rockets collections, the full scope and complexity of it all becomes clearer in a single, hard-to-put-down package.

The book traces the evolution of their world, too, from a place where aliens, monsters and superheroes thrived (rarely as the center of attention, mind you, but on the periphery of Maggie and Hopey's lives) to a place where, well, they might still be there but are largely ignored. And let's be honest, I miss them -- I still consider Maggie's high-tech mechanic days, repairing robots and spaceships and sunbathing with dinosaurs -- to be a high point of her checkered career. Heartbreak aside (one of many, after all), it's hard to believe she'd give up such a high-profile occupation to wait tables, manage apartments and the like.

Hopey, of course, never had much time for such extranatural distractions; anything that took her away from various musical endeavors, spraypainting white walls, partying, pining for Maggie and poking holes in the fabric of authority was not worth her attention.

Through a variety of flashbacks and asides, Hernandez fills us in on the backstory for the girls and their friends. The characters evolve before our eyes, through loves won and lost, feuds, fights, weight gains, hair dyes, travels and tribulations. Maggie and Hopey are certainly soulmates, although for them the course of true love never runs smoothly. (The book ends on a high note but leaves room for any number of future developments, which Jaime continues to explore in his ongoing series.)

Don't kid yourself, this isn't just some black-and-white comic book with delusions of grandeur. This is literature, fiction of the highest order, complete with visuals. The Maggie 'n' Hopey saga varies widely in its levels of realism, but you never doubt that these ladies are real.

- Rambles
written by Tom Knapp
published 4 December 2004