A book review in today’s Boston Globe caught our eye this morning, not only for introducing us to a Latino author we had never heard of before but for revealing that Gilbert Hernández was one of the first cartoonists to venture into the as-yet-uncharted waters of the graphic novel market in the 1980’s. (Some of us are closet geeks who’ve sublimated their taste for comic books into an allegedly more sophisticated interest in this now-popular medium, which is basically just a glorified comic sandwiched between two hard covers.) “Human Diastrophism”—that second word means “the action of the forces that cause the earth’s crust to be deformed, producing continents, mountains, changes of level, etc.,” according to Dictionary—is the second part of Hernández’s Love & Rockets series, most prominently featuring a fictional Central American town called Palomar that’s riddled with the kind of magical realism made so damn popular by García Márquez. The plot revolves around Luba, “a terrifying beauty and mother of four daughters, who, by [her] choice, do not know the names of their fathers.” Drama!

In the title story, we find Luba in her mid-30s mourning the loss of her youth. Although lover Archie wants to marry her, the thought of being tied down is too heavy for Luba, and she sets off on a series of adventures, attempting to relive her youth, while irresponsibly leaving her daughters to fend for themselves while a serial killer, who may be the father of one Luba’s children, is loose.

C’mon, ladies, can’t we all relate to this one? Getting older, fearing commitment, galavanting while your kids get chopped up into little pieces… Pair this kind of dark kookiness with a law saying you can’t wear skirts above the knee, and Palomar is the kind of town whose tourism board cashes in on morbid fascination. At the very least, we’re sure to visit it (for free) the next time we have about half an hour to kill at Barnes & Noble.

Graphic novel offers lessons from a mythical Central American town [Boston Globe]
Image [Google]