Love and Rockets #3 p. 01-02 (1983)

Black panels are the best! Makes this a real winner. Plus its from one of the best series of all time and features some great early art.  Thanks for posting!

It's been a minute since some great Jaime Hernandez art was posted on CAF. Great early story in which you can see Jaime building out his Locas world and fleshing out the characters. 

Bursting with creativity. 

Loving the Jaime dark inks on this early night drive scene 2 pager!

A beautiful looking complete short story! And I always love the occasional appearances of super heroes in the story line.

Seminal! That title logo!!

Love everything he did bur really love what he did in issues 2 and 3. Thanks DC!! 

Fantastic. Show it off when we do a Jaime L&R update video!!

Stellar! What a powerful inks. As you said, Jaime has an incredible control on this medium.

It's no secret that I just haven't been able to get into this series on either of my two reading attempts, but it bears mentioning that even this early on in the series, the art was already really nice. This is an excellent example with lots of nice little things going on!

Love the metaphor of the old gas guzzling car getting stuck on the tracks like one feeling hopeless about their future.  It could go either way, but the will to live and a glimmer of hope is all it takes.

Fantastic sequence.  As you mention the 9 panel grid is used to great effect here showing an early confidence and fluency in the lexicon of comics.  

Amazing.  The seminal issue where Jaime's style jumped from sci-fi to the cleaner lines and characters we came to know and love.

Beautiful art, congratulations!

I never read this series, but I sure can appreciate the art! Congratulations!

This is absolutely -SUPERB-, Jason.  This is the work of a young, hungry, insanely talented artist, throwing his heart and soul at the page and seeing how many of the tired storytelling and narrative conventions he could break.  And it was a LOT, right?  Jaime would refine his craft and further sharpen his tools, to be sure, but the raw passion on display here is hard to deny.  Or surpass, for that matter.  Honestly?  I want to ramble on at length about -every- panel (do you have a podcast or anything? ??) but a few highlights: That first panel is drop dead gorgeous, brilliantly rendered, and makes me think of Close Encounters.  And the hand-drawn logo?  So good.  -SO- good. I feel like panel 5 (on page 1), with its telescoping wall breaks, is allowing us a tantalizing glimpse, depth-wise, into the literal heart of the book (maybe even the chance to break through ourselves, A-Ha style, if we act fast enough...!), life behind and beyond the page, on some sort of z-axis safari, before the back wall mercilessly slams back into place in panel 6 with the flat black background.  Too late!

The emotional timbre Jaime is able to hit in panels 1, 2, and 4 of page 2 is incredible, but the crowning glory is panel 8, and Atoma's expression; relief, disbelief, and adrenalized focus.  Just -beautiful-.  And I'm unsure exactly when Dave Sim started leveraging the graphical impact that design-heavy lettering could have on narrative, but it wouldn't pre-date this, would it?  (Did Scott McCloud have a go in 'Zot!' ?)  Wherever Jaime got the idea for the lettering on page 3's panels 4, 5, and 6 (so loud and so close that the whole word couldn't possibly fit into the panel), the execution is breathtaking.  Who was doing this in 1985?  Fantastic.  This is a treasure, Jason, and you have my most sincere congrats imaginable for locking it away. :) 

Thanks, Jason. I think it's a masterpiece.