{"id":32431,"date":"2025-03-14T09:00:44","date_gmt":"2025-03-14T09:00:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/?p=32431"},"modified":"2025-03-13T14:23:01","modified_gmt":"2025-03-13T14:23:01","slug":"high-soft-lisp-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/2025\/03\/14\/high-soft-lisp-3\/","title":{"rendered":"High Soft Lisp"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\" \"\"
\nBy Gilbert Hernandez<\/strong> (Fantagraphics Books)
\nISBN: 978-1-60699-318-7 (TPB\/Digital edition)<\/p>\n

This book includes Discriminatory Content<\/strong> included for dramatic effect. <\/em><\/p>\n

Please pay attention: this book contains stories and images of an adult nature, specifically designed for adult consumption, employing the kind of coarse, vulgar language most kids are fluent in by the age of ten. If reading about such things is likely to offend you, please stop now and go away. Tomorrow I\u2019ll write about something with violence and explosions, so come back then.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

In addition to being part of the graphic and literary revolution that is Love and Rockets<\/strong> (where his astonishingly compulsive tales of Palomar<\/strong> and the later stories of those characters collected as Luba <\/strong>gained such critical acclaim), Gilbert Hernandez has produced compelling stand-alone tales such as Sloth<\/strong>, Grip<\/strong> and Girl Crazy<\/strong>. They are all marked by his bold, simplified line artwork and a mature, sensitive use of the literary techniques of Magical Realist <\/em>writers Carlos Fuentes and Gabriel Garc\u00eda M\u00e1rquez: techniques which he has added to and made his own.<\/p>\n

Love and Rockets<\/strong> is an anthology comics publication featuring slick, intriguing, sci fi-ish larks, heart-warming, terrifying, gut-wrenching soap-opera fantasy and bold experimental comic narratives that pretty much defy classification. The astounding Hernandez Bros still captivate with incredible stories that sample a thousand influences conceptual and actual – everything from Archie Comics and alternative music to German Expressionism and luchadores.<\/p>\n

Palomar was the conceptual and cultural playground \u201cBeto\u201d devised for extended serial Heartbreak Soup<\/strong>: a dirt-poor Latin-American village with a vibrant, funny and fantastically quotidian cast. Everything from life death, adultery, magic, serial killing and especially gossip could happen in Palomar\u2019s meta-fictional environs – and did – as the artist explored his own post-punk influences: comics, music, drugs, comics, strong women, gangs, sex, family and comics, and all in a style somehow informed by everything from Tarzan <\/strong>comics to Saturday morning cartoons and The Lucy Show<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Happily, Beto often returns to Palomar, frequently for new tales involving the formidable matriarch Luba<\/em>, who ran the village\u2019s bath house, acted as Mayor (and sometimes police chief) as well as adding regularly to the general population. Her children, brought up with no acknowledged fathers in sight or ever looked for, are Maricela<\/em>, Guadalupe<\/em>, Doralis<\/em>, Casimira<\/em>, Socorro<\/em>, Joselito <\/em>and Concepcion<\/em>.
\n\"\"
\nLuba eventually migrated to the USA and reunited with her half-sisters Petra<\/em> and – the star of this volume – Rosalba \u201cFritz\u201d Martinez<\/em>. This collection was compiled from assorted material that first appeared in Love and Rockets <\/strong>volume II and Luba\u2019s Comics and Stories<\/strong>, with new pages and many others redrawn and rewritten.<\/p>\n

Fritz is a terrifyingly complex creature. She is a psychiatrist and therapist, former B-Movie actress, occasional belly dancer, persistent drunk and ardent gun-fetishist, as well as a sexually aggressive and manipulative serial spouse. Beautiful, enticingly damaged, with a possibly-intentional and affected speech impediment, she sashays from crisis to triumph and back again.<\/p>\n

This moving, shocking, funny chronicle uses the rambling recollections of one of her past husbands – sleazy motivational speaker Mark Herrera<\/em> – to review her life from High School punkette outsider through her various career and family ups and downs…
\n\"\"
\nUnder the umbrella title of \u2018Dumb Solitaire\u2019<\/em>, what purports to be the memoir of Senor Herrera reveals in scathing depth the troubled life of a woman he just cannot stay away from in an uncompromising and sexually explicit \u201cdocumentary\u201d which pulls no punches, makes no judgements and yet still manages to come off as a feel-good tale.<\/p>\n

High Soft Lisp <\/strong>is the most intriguing depiction of feminine power and behaviour since Flaubert\u2019s Madame Bovary<\/strong> – and probably just as troubling and controversial – with the added advantage of intoxicating drawing adding shades of meaning mere text cannot impart.<\/p>\n

Extremely funny and powerfully moving, remarkable and unmissable: no fan of the medium, student of humanity or lover of life in the raw should deprive themselves of this treat.
\n\u00a9 2010 Gilbert Hernandez. All Rights Reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Gilbert Hernandez (Fantagraphics Books) ISBN: 978-1-60699-318-7 (TPB\/Digital edition) This book includes Discriminatory Content included for dramatic effect. Please pay attention: this book contains stories and images of an adult nature, specifically designed for adult consumption, employing the kind of coarse, vulgar language most kids are fluent in by the age of ten. If reading … <\/p>\n

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