，t<br > As we are informed so often in the media of late， the New Comics are here. Over the last couple<br > of years， enough genuinely interesting titles have sprung up from the generally mundane and<br > moribund mass of the comics mainstream to provoke rumors of a renaissance. The comic strip<br > seems to be teetering on the verge of both a new mass acceptance and a qnantum leap in terms<br > of quality. And yet， if we look through the material under discussion， leaving aside the hype<br > and adrenaline， what do we really find? We find a few super-hero/fantasy titles in which the<br > quality of writing and graphic artistry has been refined to a standard well above the admittedly<br > low standards of that particular genre. That isn t to take anything away from the accomplish-<br > ment of a work like Dark Knight， or， God knows， Watchmen. Rather， it s an attempt to put<br > them in perspective: They are very good super-hero comics. The novelty of what is such an<br > apparent contradiction in terms has probably been responsible for bringing a lot of the popular<br > critical attention and subsequent influx of new readers that comics have enjoyed of late， but<br > novelty seems a fickle phenomenon to hang the aspirations of an entire medium upon. Simply<br > put， the vast potential audience for comics that allegedly waits out there cannot be expected<br > to endlessly endure the same procession of capes and masks that the semi-addicted and thus<br > more forgiving hardcore comic book reader has accepted over the past 40 years. Whatever con-<br > temporary nuances we might choose to update the super-hero s basic wardrobe with， at the end<br > of the day we still have a super-hero comic， with all of the limitations that term implies. If comic<br > books seriously hope to establish themselves amidst the media monsoon of the 80s and 90s，<br > they must make the eftort to go beyond such artificial boundaries. They must stake out new<br > territories with a breadth more suited to the demands of the times.<br > In my opinion， when all the dust and the flavor-of-the-month furor have been allowed to settle，<br > one of the names most likely to emerge as a genuinely innovative force within the field is that<br > of Gilbert Hemandez， author and artist of this current volume and part of the breathtaking fam-<br >:ily enterprise that is Love and Rockets along with equally talented siblings Jaime and， less fre-<br >quently， Mario. When this black and white anthology title burst like a signal flare over the comic<br >book landscape a few short years ago， its impact was profound and immediate. Deliberately<br >"ayoiding the proven， popular， and profitable content of the teen-age super-hero team books，<br >~l-，ove & Rockets has never been one of the industry s best selling titles， but it has remained con-<br >slstenly amongst the very best reading that the medium has to offer. The material within is<br >i~ithout exception intelligent， stylish， and charged with a raw visceral impact that other media<br >~0nly occasionally provide. Above all， the work in Love & Rockets rewards the attentions of<br >，a，more serious and mature reader because it is challenging， and nowhere lnore so than in the<br >work collected in this volume~<br > In Heartbreak Soup， Gilbert Hernandez has produced a comic strip which for its effect depends<br >，Upon an entirely different set of principles than those usually applied to mainstream American<br >.comics. Even more than brother Jaime， who to a degree revels in reworking tile icons and sym-<br >bols of comic book trash culture in his "Locas" stories， Gilbert is drawing upon sources which<br >to the traditional comic book tan must seem alien and obscure. In his use of solid black and in<br >!he kinetic fur)， of his characters it s possible to see the influence of the Japanese manga cartoon-<br >Ists at work. Elsewhere， the boldness of his compositions ew)kes the current crop of European<br >bande dessinee merchants in its use of open space. Somehow， these diverse sensibilities are<br >then brought to bear upon the everyday events ofa sntall and impoverished Mexican communi-<br >ty， the end result being a strip that is certairdy the most emotionally powerful and perhaps also<br >the most skillfully written offering currently available.<br > For its subject matter， Heartbreak Soup focuses unblinkingly upon the lives of people who<br >are painfully ordinary and， in a confic book marketplace dominated by mutants， man-nmchines，<br >and martial-arts-mercenarms， even mundane. It lives gs<br > ~ - ， ，， presents a s or)， /e where he lives and doiu ，s<br >~1 even the most minor backgrot ld characte s beco ne st enerossi，m in th~.i -t;， ， m， g<br > - ~. ，， g .e._ re..ec .，~，sclx a-<br >tlOn tnat the idea of there being sortie heroic "nlain ch~.u aclers" lbr the strip to revolve around<br >