Locas II: Maggie, Hopey & Ray (Love & Rockets)

In this second big hardcover omnibus collection of his ongoing tales of the “Locas,” Jaime Hernandez continues telling stories of the complexly intersecting paths of his main characters Maggie, Hopey and Ray.

This volume picks up shortly after Maggie and Hopey’s long-awaited reunion at the end of the first Locas. Even though her love life remains as chaotic as ever, Hopey takes her first few steps toward responsible adulthood with a real job (as a teacher), while a demoralized, divorced Maggie ends up as the manager of a fleabag apartment building where she continues to wrestle with the demons of her past—most prominently in the stunning centerpiece of the volume, the graphic-novel-length “Maggie” serial, with its stunning, hallucinatory dream finale.

Meanwhile, Ray still carries a major torch for Maggie, but falls in with the “Frogmouth,” the volatile bombshell whose ties to local thugs cause him no small amount of grief.

Of course, Maggie, Hopey, and Ray’s paths continue to intersect in Hernandez’s increasingly complex, intricate, and always vitally realized world.

This omnibus volume compiles stories originally printed in the pages of the comics Penny Century, the one-shot special Maggie & Hopey Color Fun (presented here in black and white), and Love and Rockets Vol. II, and was formerly collected in the volumes Dicks and Deedees, Locas in Love, Ghost of Hoppers and The Education of Hopey Glass.