Love from the Shadows, by Gilbert Hernandez: A Review

Writer and Artist: Gilbert Hernandez; Cover Painting: Steve Martinez

Rating 4 out of 5 stars

Gilbert and Jaime Hernandez have both created interesting, multi-faceted, nuanced, compelling characters within the Love and Rockets series. I often find myself discussing these fictional creations with girlfriend as if they were real people. For me, one of the most fascinating characters is Rosalba "Fritz" Martinez, the half-sister of Luba (the protagonist of many of Gilbert Hernandez's stories, for those unfamiliar with Love and Rockets). Fritz is a curvaceous psychotherapist turned B-movie actress with self-esteem issues, a drinking problem and a gun fetish. Oh, yes, and she also speaks with a pronounced lisp. Much of Fritz's story, and that of her one-time husband, motivational speaker Mark Herrera, is told in the High Soft Lisp graphic novel. Other details, including her troubled relationships with her sister Petra and their mother Maria, are recounted in other volumes.

In the last few years, Gilbert Hernandez has been creating graphic novel adaptations of the movies that Fritz has acted in. (I guess you could say that they are stories within stories.) Love From the Shadows is the third of these to come out, and it is certainly a very unusual work.

The story revolves around Dolores (the character portrayed by Fritz) and her brother Sonny, who are estranged from their emotionally distant novelist father. The siblings come to visit their father at his house by the lake, possessing a half-formed intention to murder him for his fortune. But then he wanders into a nearby mysterious cave and emerges as a wide-eyed, giggling, semi-catatonic loon. Now Dolores and Sonny cannot decide if they want to kill their father, or care for him.

At this point Dolores wanders off, and falls in with a trio of scam artists who stage manifestations of "ghosts." The group's leader, Mr. Zim, rationalizes this by explaining "We're in the business of giving solace to people unable to find it for themselves." However, Dolores presence triggers rivalries and resentments among the three men, causing the flimflam scheme to self-destruct. Dolores herself once again runs away.

Back at the lake house, Sonny learns that his father, despite his refusal to have anything to do with Dolores, has left the bulk of his estate to his daughter. Sonny then embarks upon a bizarre, outrageous scheme to claim the money for himself.

Love From the Shadows is a very strange story. Surreal is such an overused word, but it is the best description I can come up with to describe the tone of the work. There is a disjointed, dream-like progression to the narrative. The concept of individuals taking on false personas, seen both in Dolores' involvement with the hustlers and Sonny's plans to obtain his sister's inheritance, tie in with this. The identities of both Dolores and Sonny become blurred, uncertain and ambiguous. The reader is left to ponder what kind of person each of them really was.

Hernandez instills a pseudo-dystopian sci-fi element into the narrative with the presence of the Monitors. A vaguely sinister group clad in jumpsuits and sunglasses, the Monitors follow people around, asking probing questions such as "How come you look like that?" and "How come you talk like that?" Although their presence is incongruous and inexplicable, the Monitors' intention is apparently to cause people to look at the everyday qualities and habits that they take for granted. In other words, the Monitors' seeming purpose is to force others to reappraise their identities.

The question of gender roles within society is touched upon. Dolores mentions several times that she is not able to cook. However, her brother Sonny, who happens to be homosexual, is able to. Dolores worries that she will never marry and have children. At one point she insists that she is not a tramp, but later on she states "I'm a no good tramp. I'm trash and I know it." Hernandez appears to be exploring the roles that socialization imposes upon women, the expectations of what is appropriate behavior, and what is not.

The structuring of the story is very much involved with the issue of personality and self. Love From the Shadows opens with Dolores looking very much like Fritz herself. Seeing the Monitors lurking outside her home, Dolores hides in her basement, which somehow leads into a cave. After wandering through a tunnel, Dolores emerges onto a city street looking older, her hair now streaked with gray. Another cave, the one near her father's house that he wanders into, is a place he forbid Dolores and Sonny from playing in when they were children. The siblings are reluctant to enter the cave to find their father, and when he emerges he is unbalanced. Towards the end of the book, Dolores visits a hair salon, where she dyes her hair black again, regaining her youthful appearance. But after a run-in with a Monitor, she finds herself back at the entrance of the cave. Hernandez draws her as a small, naked figure against the vast blackness of the cavern mouth she is about to enter.

The cave is obviously significant, a metaphor. Could it represents that which lies hidden within us, what we keep buried, our true natures, our real identities? The relationship Dolores and Sonny have with their father is very dysfunctional. He is shown to be a cruel, bitter man. Both siblings believe that he drove their mother to suicide. Perhaps the reason he went mad after entering the cave was that he could not face what it revealed to him, the truth of what sort of person he really was.

Dolores, who has just turned 40, is at a crossroads. She does not know who she is, or what role her family and society would have her to play. Dolores flees from one place after another, from her job as a waitress, from her brother and father, from the con artists. At first she hopes to find an identity in each new setting, but eventually she runs, afraid of being forced into the constraints of their expectations. Dolores also appears to fear the future. Just as she does not want to enter the cave, so too is she afraid of finding her true identity. At the end, Dolores finally seems to realize that until she goes into the cave, she will either continue to play the roles others assign to her, or be forever running from them. She needs to enter that dark chasm and discover her true self, or she will never be able to move forward.

At least, that is my impression after a single reading of Love From the Shadows and some further thought on the material afterwards. If I went back and read it again in a month, perhaps I would come away with something completely different. As I mentioned in my review of the Citizen Rex miniseries, much of Gilbert Hernandez's writing is multi-layered, and it can often take several readings to pick up the various subtleties of his stories.

Okay, I will admit it: there were definitely times when I wished that Hernandez had been less obscure in his writing on Love From the Shadows. At certain moments the book was frustratingly cryptic. However, sitting down to write this review required me to give the book serious thought and analysis, which resulted in some fascinating possible insights on the material.

It's worth noting that the plot and atmosphere of Love From the Shadows do not really have the feel of what I associate with a "B-movie," i.e. a cheaply made exploitation genre flick. Love From the Shadows seems much more like an art house film. If it was a real movie, I could easily imagine it receiving one of those classy, bonus-laden DVD releases from Criterion. Maybe that's a minor quibble. But it is stated in High Soft Lisp that most of the Fritz's movies went straight to video or late night cable, at least in the States. Okay, her films did get theatrical releases in many foreign markets. Love From the Shadows would no doubt play to packed houses in France.

That said, I look forward to Gilbert Hernandez creating a graphic novel version of The Earthians, a Fritz movie that seems to be some kind of sci-fi story. Thinking back to Hernandez's really early story "B.E.M." in Love and Rockets, I can just imagine that a blending of space opera tropes with his penchant for hallucinatory imagery, raw sexuality, and magical realism could result in a truly memorable work.

I have not yet touched upon the artwork in Love From the Shadows. As with so much of Hernandez's work, it is beautifully illustrated. The art is suffused with emotion and atmosphere and eroticism. The work Hernandez does is a critical component to his examining all of the societal, psychological, and sexual issues. So much of the story's characterization and drama is established not through dialogue, but via the expressions & body language of his characters, the "camera angles" of his panels, and the flow of his storytelling.

Oh, yes, the cover painting by Steve Martinez is quite lovely. It evokes the romance and suspense illustrations found on the covers of mid-20th century paperbacks.

In conclusion, the casual reader might not find Love From the Shadows very compelling. Perhaps it may even be confusing. As my girlfriend observed, the book seems directed more at those already versed with Gilbert Hernandez's work and style. If you're a newcomer to Hernandez, I highly recommend first picking up the aforementioned High Soft Lisp, or the various collections of stories featuring Luba (Poison River and Chelo's Burden are good starting points). For those people who are familiar with the characters and themes of Hernandez's material, I think they will find Love From the Shadows an intriguing, offbeat story that is open to examination and interpretation. In other words, despite a certain lack of clarity in the narrative area, Love From the Shadows is an intellectually stimulating read. And the artwork is magnificent.