Beto, Part 2

Gilbert Hernandez always seems to have two things, at least, going on at once.

His best stories are funny, but they also display an incredibly deep river of sadness. His characters are wacky and good-looking, they speak continually of love and lust, but they abandon their children with the blink of an eye.

And while his characters tell us one thing, his drawings sometimes show us something else.

In a 1993 four-page story called “Pipo,” included in his Human Diastrophism book, one of the Palomar collections, the title character reflects how her fashion business did so well “I had to fire my old seamstresses and hire faster, young ones. Yeah, I know; but that’s another story.”

Her comment refers to earlier remarks by other characters about the lovely Pipo’s employment practices. But more prominent is the image Hernandez shows us. As Pipo talks, we see smoke billowing behind her on the horizon.

Just how does she mean she “fired” those older seamstresses?

Read my earlier post on Gilbert Hernandez here. And on his brother and co-creator of Love & Rockets, Jaime Hernandez, here.

Beto

Gilbert Hernandez is a genius.

I’ve been rereading his Love & Rockets Palomar stories and I’m impressed once more with his brilliance. His characters are funny, sad, kind, cruel, smart and stupid, they dance, they cry, they lust and love, and they murder: The brilliance is they behave very much as real people. And like one of Dickens’s massive novels — Bleakhouse or Little Dorrit come to mind — Hernandez’s stories support dozens of characters, each one finely detailed, and over long stretches of their individual lives.

In Human Diastrophism, for example, we see how a “ghost tree” mentioned in an introductory short, short story reveals the fate of one misbegotten character near the tale’s end. And a few panels after a citizen of Palomar praises the work of Van Gogh, Beto (as he signs his work) turns the town’s daytime sky into a starry night.

The beauty of Hernandez’s skill is not only in his epic sweep but also in the details. Gosh.

More to come.

You can read my post on Gilbert’s brother Jaime Hernandez here.