Love From the Shadows


By Gilbert Hernandez (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-406-1
There’s fiction, there’s Meta-fiction and then there is Gilbert Hernandez. In addition to being part of the graphic and literary revolution of Love and Rockets (where his astonishingly accessible and captivating tales of rural Palomar first garnered overwhelming critical acclaim) he has produced stand-alone books such as Sloth, Grip, Birdland and Girl Crazy, all marked by his bold, instinctive, compellingly simplified artwork and a mature, sensitive adoption of the literary techniques of Magical Realist writers like Carlos Fuentes and Gabriel García Márquez: techniques which he has amplified and, visually at least, made his own.

Then he acknowledged such influences as Roger Corman, John Cassavetes, Elmore Leonard and Jim Thompson as he broke new ground and reprocessed the cultural influences that shaped all us baby-boomers.

In Luba we glimpsed the troubled life of the lead character’s half-sister Rosalba “Fritz” Martinez: a brilliant, troubled woman, speech-impaired psychotherapist, sex-worker, belly-dancer and “B-movie” starlet of such faux screen gems as We Love Alone, Seven Bullets to Hell, Chest Fever, Blood is the Drug and Lie Down in the Dark.

Fritzi has an irresistible or incredibly annoying lisp and unfeasibly large breasts.

In 2007 Hernandez “adapted” one of those trashy movies as the graphic novel Chance in Hell – although Fritzi only had a bit part in it – and repeated the story-within-a-story- within-a-story trick in 2009 with The Troublemakers – a frantic, hell-bent pulp fiction crime thriller.

Now he returns to his eccentric sideline to translate the wildly experimental independent/exploitation/sexploitation tale Love From the Shadows into a stunning graphic rollercoaster ride of broken families, counter-culture angst, embezzlement, greed madness, obsession, charlatanry, psychics and mysterious aliens in possibly the greatest tribute to scurrilous lowbrow movie maestro Russ Meyer ever seen…

“Playing” three different roles in this dubious epic, Fritzi is mostly Dolores, the estranged and distractedly promiscuous daughter of a successful author.  In a world much like ours she meanders her solitary way, only occasionally impeded by the ubiquitous, mysterious Monitors who perpetually pester normal citizens with their oddly intrusive and brusque personal questions…

With her equally neglected and emotionally abused gay brother Sonny, she visits the old reprobate, daydreaming of either a heartfelt reconciliation or bloody patricide, but the stay is filled with the usual mind-games and confrontations.

When they all visit the beach the old man wanders into a cave and is lost. When he is eventually found daddy dearest’s razor-like mind is utterly shattered…

Since he is clearly a far better and more friendly father whilst deranged, the siblings move in to the palatial home to look after him, but one day after a swim Dolores is inexplicably drawn away to the city where she joins a trio of conmen scamming old men and widowers. Wistful, dreamy, always looking for love, she becomes their stooge, playing dead wives and ghostly daughters till her sexually charged presence splits the gang with fatal consequences…

Meanwhile, her own father has died and Sonny is horrified to discover that the entire multi-million dollar estate has been left to his vanished sister. Hurt, outcast and permanently ostracized, Sonny uses his own small bequest to pay for sex-change surgery and becomes “Dolores”, beginning an oddly gratifying affair with a psychic named Anton who seemingly discerned all his/her secrets with one telling glance.

Impossible, surreal tragedy strikes when against all logic Sonny’s body repairs all the surgeries and rejects the hormone treatments, reverting to full masculinity, just as the real Dolores returns…

Missing his beloved Sonny, Anton meets Dolores and takes her to the Cavern where her father died. He convinces her to replace Sonny just as her brother had impersonated her…

Now rich and contented, Dolores is drawn into a world of cults, continuing her lifetime obsession with a certain type of man, but the liaison inevitably leads to heartbreak and bloody death… and always the evocative imagery and subtly dangerous attraction of The Cave impinges and threatens…

As the Monitors inexplicably vanish from the streets, Dolores dyes her hair and hopes she’s finally free, but she’s only heading into the shadows of that ever-calling cavern…

Beguiling and absolutely mesmerising, this perfect pastiche of the genre is stuffed with Hernandez’s raw sexuality, trippy, mind-warping tension and sly elements of filmic surrealism which carry the reader through the deliberately obfuscative, intentionally challenging narrative, whilst his superbly primitivist cartooning seduces the eye as much as his glandular heroine ever could. These books are truly movies so bad and different they ought to be made…

Every adult who loved Up!, Beneath the Valley of the Ultra-Vixens or Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! should snap this up immediately and revel in the graphic insanity, and open-minded comics fans should take a look beyond the costumes and chains of continuity to take a true walk on the Wild Side.

© 2011 Gilbert Hernandez. All rights reserved.