The Love Bunglers: 0 - Hardcover

[Hernandez's] writing is as funny and candid as ever. His drawing is -- always has been -- just a dream. It seamlessly combines conventional representation and cartoony exaggeration -- often in the same panel. But it's the depth that you drown in, the sense that we are swimming in the deep waters of the heart here.--Teddy Jamieson

This book represents Jaime's best work, and is one of the best comics I've ever read.--Colleen Frakes

The most moving sequence in any book I've read this year is entirely wordless. ... As ever with Hernandez, it's funny, complex, unsettling and beautifully drawn. It's also a reminder that a graphic novel can do things that a novel told in straightforward prose simply can't.--Anna Carey

...[A]s irresistible as ever, peeling back the years to reveal a lifetime of powerful relationships, rejections, infidelities, and adventures.--Calvin Reid

Since 1981, with pitch-perfect dialogue and impeccable draftsmanship, Hernandez has conveyed more entertaining (and poignant) drama than just about any contemporary filmmaker or novelist. There's a word for what this guy is doing with his life's work -- can someone give him a MacArthur grant and make it official?--R.C. Baker

I don't really understand why the material of Love and Rockets isn't widely regarded as one of the finest pieces of fiction of the last 35 years. Because it is.--Neal Gaiman

All of the elements are woven together masterfully. A few chapters about the characters as kids added to the depth of the story by providing motivation for how they interacted as adults. ... Hernandez's female characters have a mix of body types that is rarely seen in comics. They're fat, thin, athletic, young, old, and everywhere in between. What's amazing is that they're drawn in a way that expresses their beauty and shows his love for them all.--Gene Ambaum

Jaime Hernandez keeps hitting home runs. It's almost like he doesn't know how to stop. ... You don't have to have ever read a Hernandez Bros. story before to appreciate the achievement, but for those who have, it's impossible to reach the end without shedding serious tears. It's that good, heartbreaking, and breathtaking in even measure. It's just about perfect, and you can put that on the book flap.--Tim O'Neil

Hernandez's understated dialogue and sparse, bold lines make every panel of his recent work sing and sting, and midway he drops the floor out from beneath his readers' feet. The narrative strands of his characters' histories converge, as the grand story he's been drawing for 30 years glides to its conclusion -- the most heartbreaking ending possible that's still, technically, a happy ending.--Douglas Wolk

The story moves masterfully between time periods, compressing and dilating key moments so that you're never sure what's around the next panel. It packs an emotional wallop even if you're not familiar with the characters.--Jeff Jackson

Featuring Hernandez’s longtime Love and Rockets heroine Maggie, the suppression of family history is the initial thread that ties the The Love Bunglers together. Because these secrets can’t be dealt with openly, their lingering effect is even more powerful. But Maggie’s ability to navigate and find meaning in her life — despite losing her culture, her brother, her profession, and her friends — is what’s made her a compelling character. After a lifetime of losses, Maggie finds, in the second half, her longtime off and on lover, Ray Dominguez. In taking us through lives, deaths, and near-fatalities, The Love Bunglers encapsulates Maggie’s emotional history as it moves from resignation to memories of loss, to sudden violence (a theme in this story) and eventually to love and contentment. Much like what John Updike created in his four Rabbit novels, Jaime Hernandez has been following his longtime character, Maggie, around for several decades, all of which has seemed to be building towards this book in particular.