Luba is a comic book character created by
Gilbert Hernandez
Gilberto Hernández (born February 1, 1957), usually credited as Gilbert Hernandez and also by the nickname Beto (), is an American cartoonist. He is best known for his ''Palomar''/''Heartbreak Soup'' stories in '' Love and Rockets'', an alterna ...
, featured mainly in the ''
Love and Rockets'' series by these authors. She first appeared in "BEM", found in the ''Love and Rockets'' collection ''Music for Mechanics''.
Created by
Gilbert Hernandez
Gilberto Hernández (born February 1, 1957), usually credited as Gilbert Hernandez and also by the nickname Beto (), is an American cartoonist. He is best known for his ''Palomar''/''Heartbreak Soup'' stories in '' Love and Rockets'', an alterna ...
, Luba was the protagonist for his main contribution to the
Hernandez brothers
The Hernandez brothers, also known as Los Bros Hernandez, are the three American cartoonist brothers Mario (b. 1953), Gilbert (b. 1957), and Jaime Hernandez (b. 1959).
The three were born in a Mexican-American family and grew up i ...
' groundbreaking comic book ''Love and Rockets''. Based largely in a small Central American village named Palomar, the Luba stories follow the progress of Luba and her ever increasing family through the years. Luba was ranked 60th in ''
Comics Buyer's Guide
''Comics Buyer's Guide'' (''CBG''; ), established in 1971, was the longest-running English-language periodical reporting on the American comic book industry. It awarded its annual Comics Buyer's Guide Fan Awards from 1983 to circa 2010. The public ...
's'' "100 Sexiest Women in Comics" list.
From the outset Luba is portrayed as a beautiful, fiery-tempered woman with enormous breasts and an eye for younger men, often depicted in random panels inexplicably carrying a hammer. This, in conjunction with
Jaime Hernandez
Jaime (sometimes spelled Xaime) Hernandez (born 1959) is the co-creator of the Alternative comics, alternative comic book ''Love and Rockets (comics), Love and Rockets'' with his brothers Gilbert Hernandez, Gilbert and Mario Hernandez (comics), M ...
' "Maggie and Hopey" tales, differentiated ''Love And Rockets'' from other comics in that the principal characters were all strong women who, whilst being independent, were also fallible. Through some twenty odd years Gilbert has taken the character of Luba through her infancy as the illegitimate child of a woman married into organized crime, through to life as a middle-aged migrant to America.
Some of the Luba tales take place in Palomar where Gilbert developed a rich cast of residents, who over the years developed an intricate series of relations with each other. The bulk of the tales dealt with what happened after Luba and her family moved from Palomar to California to escape the mafia and be near her half sisters Fritz and Petra. These stories comprise the books that make up the ''Luba Trilogy: Luba in America'', ''The Book Of Ofelia'', and ''The Three Daughters''.
Further reading
* "A Broader Canvas: Gilbert Hernandez's ''Heartbreak Soup''",
Alternative Comics: An Emerging Literature' by Charles Hatfield, University Press of Mississippi (2009)
* "Abracadabra: The Mind-Reading Trick",
Your Brain on Latino Comics: From Gus Arriola to Los Bros Hernandez' by Frederick Luis Aldama, University of Texas Press (2012)
* "Gilbert Hernandez: Spiraling Into the System",
Reading Comics: How Graphic Novels Work and What They Mean' by Douglas Wolk, Hachette Books (2008)
* "Perverse Narratives on the Border",
Latin American Fiction and the Narratives of the Perverse: Paper Dolls and Spider Women' by P. O'Connor, Palmgrave Macmillan (2004)
References
{{Reflist
Female characters in comics