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Bumperhead
A fascinatingly disjointed tale of drugs, rock and roll, and adolescence from a legendary cartoonist The Love and Rockets author, Gilbert Hernandez, returns with Bumperhead , a companion book to Marble Season . Whereas Marble Season explored the exuberant and occasionally troubled existence of the wide-eyed preteen Huey, Bumperhead zeroes in on disaffected teenhood with its protagonist, Bobby.
Bumperhead follows Bobby, a young slacker who narrates his life as it happens but offers very little reflection on the events that transpire. He lives in the moment exclusively and is incapable of seeing the world outside of his experiences. He comes of age in the 1970s, making a rapid progression through that era's different subcultures and in a short period of time segues from a stoner glam rocker to a drunk rocker to a speed-freak punk. He drifts in and out of relationships with friends, both male and female. Life zooms past him.
Hernandez's approach captures the numbness and raw undirected anger and passion of a young man who waits for life to happen to him, not noticing all the while that it is happening. Subtle and thought-provoking, Bumperhead is a fascinating read.
Bumperhead follows Bobby, a young slacker who narrates his life as it happens but offers very little reflection on the events that transpire. He lives in the moment exclusively and is incapable of seeing the world outside of his experiences. He comes of age in the 1970s, making a rapid progression through that era's different subcultures and in a short period of time segues from a stoner glam rocker to a drunk rocker to a speed-freak punk. He drifts in and out of relationships with friends, both male and female. Life zooms past him.
Hernandez's approach captures the numbness and raw undirected anger and passion of a young man who waits for life to happen to him, not noticing all the while that it is happening. Subtle and thought-provoking, Bumperhead is a fascinating read.
128 pages, Hardcover
First published September 23, 2014
1 person is currently reading
260 people want to read
About the author
Gilbert Hernández
431 books419 followersGilbert and his brother Jaime Hernández mostly publish their separate storylines together in Love And Rockets and are often referred to as 'Los Bros Hernandez'.
Gilbert Hernandez is an American cartoonist best known for the Palomar and Heartbreak Soup stories in Love and Rockets, the groundbreaking alternative comic series he created with his brothers Jaime and Mario. Raised in Oxnard, California in a lively household shaped by comics, rock music and a strong creative streak, he developed an early fascination with graphic storytelling. His influences ranged from Marvel legends Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko to the humor and clarity of Hank Ketcham and the Archie line, as well as the raw energy of the underground comix that entered his life through his brother Mario.
In 1981 the brothers self-published the first issue of Love and Rockets, which quickly drew the attention of Fantagraphics Books. The series became a defining work of the independent comics movement, notable for its punk spirit, emotional depth and multiracial cast. Gilbert's Palomar stories, centered on the residents of a fictional Latin American village, combined magic realism with soap-opera intimacy and grew into an ambitious narrative cycle admired for its complex characters and bold storytelling. Works like Human Diastrophism helped solidify his reputation as one of the medium's most inventive voices.
Across periods when Love and Rockets was on hiatus, Hernandez built out a parallel body of work, creating titles such as New Love, Luba, and Luba's Comics and Stories, as well as later graphic novels including Sloth and The Troublemakers. He also collaborated with Peter Bagge on the short-lived series Yeah! and continued to explore new directions in Love and Rockets: New Stories.
Celebrated for his portrayal of independent women and for his distinctive blend of realism and myth, Hernandez remains a major figure in contemporary comics and a lasting influence on generations of artists.
Gilbert Hernandez is an American cartoonist best known for the Palomar and Heartbreak Soup stories in Love and Rockets, the groundbreaking alternative comic series he created with his brothers Jaime and Mario. Raised in Oxnard, California in a lively household shaped by comics, rock music and a strong creative streak, he developed an early fascination with graphic storytelling. His influences ranged from Marvel legends Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko to the humor and clarity of Hank Ketcham and the Archie line, as well as the raw energy of the underground comix that entered his life through his brother Mario.
In 1981 the brothers self-published the first issue of Love and Rockets, which quickly drew the attention of Fantagraphics Books. The series became a defining work of the independent comics movement, notable for its punk spirit, emotional depth and multiracial cast. Gilbert's Palomar stories, centered on the residents of a fictional Latin American village, combined magic realism with soap-opera intimacy and grew into an ambitious narrative cycle admired for its complex characters and bold storytelling. Works like Human Diastrophism helped solidify his reputation as one of the medium's most inventive voices.
Across periods when Love and Rockets was on hiatus, Hernandez built out a parallel body of work, creating titles such as New Love, Luba, and Luba's Comics and Stories, as well as later graphic novels including Sloth and The Troublemakers. He also collaborated with Peter Bagge on the short-lived series Yeah! and continued to explore new directions in Love and Rockets: New Stories.
Celebrated for his portrayal of independent women and for his distinctive blend of realism and myth, Hernandez remains a major figure in contemporary comics and a lasting influence on generations of artists.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 63 reviews
March 14, 2020
I may be too generous with this 4 (****) star rating, though "Bumperhead" IS certainly above-average. It may not be as arresting as "Ghost World" or "My New York Diary", & each vignette may occupy a short, single page. But its worthwhile, and, if anything, deceptively profound. Plus, what's up with the i-Pad as time-traveling motif? Yep. An angry adolescent is always an excellent subject worth exploring.
January 28, 2016
This follows Marble Season, which focused on the pre-teen growing up period, and it seems sort of exuberant: it's about youth! Bumperhead focuses on a teen growing up in the seventies, a kind of slacker, into punk, pretty cynical, but (to me) real, but likable. That's key, seems to me, if you are gonna like this; can you relate to or understand the kid? I was pre-punk, and never really that disaffected or that same kind of angry (though I was politically active and angry about Vietnam and civil rights and education during this time, true), but I like this kid and am interested in his world. Maybe in part because I HAVE a kind of special needs, disaffected kid, maybe because I have always gravitated as a teacher to such kids. Also, I am a Beto fan; I read everything he does and mostly like it all.
I saw, at a glance that one reviewer said, "this is literally the worst book I have ever read," and I laughed aloud. What I was thinking was that this visceral reaction (which I loved, as a reaction, though I clearly disagree with it) may be a response to just being annoyed with this slacker punk kid and his family and friends and array of girlfriends and drugs and alcohol and the whole boy stoner culture. . . I dunno. I get it. And this kid doesn't care what you think of him. Screw you! He doesn't need you as a friend!
For me, this comic captures a period and an attitude and to my mind looks back on it with a kind of affection. I mean, we don'e know why he is angry; it's not political, it's not particularly focused, all this grumpy teen angst. But Bumperhead captures some of the anger and alienation and the checking out of society of some young people, and Hernandez looks back on it with bemusement and love. I liked this a lot. Pretty memorable for me.
I saw, at a glance that one reviewer said, "this is literally the worst book I have ever read," and I laughed aloud. What I was thinking was that this visceral reaction (which I loved, as a reaction, though I clearly disagree with it) may be a response to just being annoyed with this slacker punk kid and his family and friends and array of girlfriends and drugs and alcohol and the whole boy stoner culture. . . I dunno. I get it. And this kid doesn't care what you think of him. Screw you! He doesn't need you as a friend!
For me, this comic captures a period and an attitude and to my mind looks back on it with a kind of affection. I mean, we don'e know why he is angry; it's not political, it's not particularly focused, all this grumpy teen angst. But Bumperhead captures some of the anger and alienation and the checking out of society of some young people, and Hernandez looks back on it with bemusement and love. I liked this a lot. Pretty memorable for me.
December 10, 2014
I ask Lalo to refer to his sci-fi toy about what my future holds: same old misery, or worse misery?
Before he can answer, I change my question and ask where rock music is going.
The Ramones. The Ramones will change rock music for the better.
Bobby is about out of mandatory experience and everyone he has known his whole life are going their ways. Dad is drunk with him, for now, and nodding off. Bobby has the old-baby look as his body sags into the booze and triumph. Arms jerkily akimbo and lost to the taken for granted past or future. Fuck yeah, the New York Dolls. Naz was right! The future is the gray areas around the bright spots of the primal sound. I can't see Bobby with the voice that reaches the wordless places. It's more the animal eye of the storm. It kind of hurts how the world can feel so much the miles of colorless humming. Shouldn't his IT'S ABOUT DAMNED TIME music carry him more than this? I already knew that the people who leave him were 1. Not that with him anyway 2. Had their own empty life spaces. It starts eating the time somewhere in the mouth or maybe the eyes. All of that talking and unseeing. Bobby can be found dying on the way to the next thing. An unmade bed to lie in is still a hole. His childhood friend has an ipad from the future. Sometimes Lalo spouts out knowledge that has no bearing on anything. A half black president or public deaths to dictators. Bobby used to tell him you could make up anything on there as if he knew all about it. Where does the childhood ingenuity go? Is it a myth that kids are born with bull shit detectors. If Bobby had one he sold it out for a dull buzz to cut out his brain. Bobby isn't really tempted to ask about himself. What's there to ask when to move in any direction is the death headlights. What's the next sound? I wish they had listened to any band that I didn't already know about. T-Rex, The Clash, The New York Dolls, Big Star, David Bowie, The Runaways, Roxy Music. The starry sidewalk of there are giant space lizards jamming to their satellites of love in a galaxy far, far away. Weren't there magazines around? Some people are born knowing of everything cool and the rest of us get a miracle of what we need when we really need it. Yeah, I'm greedy for what is going to save my life next. There has got to be buried treasure. All of the music that is created every year. Their guru Naz gets his hands on amounts of vinyl I would see only in my dreams. I would choose my purchases based on what had the most tracks (live albums, usually). Where did these (none seem a bit upper class) kids get all of that dough? How many record stores in Oxnard, California could there be with five finger discounts? Oh well, I just think they didn't appreciate a great thing. I'd count down the days for Christmas and cried when I got Never freaking Let Me Down. What's next when there were all of these riches?! I believe it when all Bobby has are those impossible highs chased in the first time he hears the raw power. I am so thankful I am not him. He looks possessed. In the crowd, alone and they might not be unlike him but still alone. Kid doesn't know the magic of learning how to "play" that song you can't stop listening to in your head. He's like that with girls too. Next, new girl, not her but her. Stupid boy. Life is going to be too long if you go through it like that. Fatter, slowly dying in his chair, beer in hand, acid or speed, heart attacks, false alarm, no real, there's that guy I used to know, get angry so you don't hear what they are saying. Young Bobby tries to not hear the nothing of the day grinds. People look angry. If you could see what they thought about Bobby I bet they'd say the same thing. Old and older Bobby gets good in the way of not listening to anyone in the way that doesn't mean anything. You never knew them anyway and some jobs lay off, husbands don't listen. I don't know. I've been there of spending that time when people work for futures escaping into those voices that make the brief moments feel like they mean something. The awful times when people stop talking to me because I can't account for my time in a way that sounds better than I got carried away on an unbelievable wavelength. It doesn't feel right to me to mix up what anyone else did with their time into it. If the kid with the shitty garage band still sucked or the high school gf who dumped him for God. They weren't going to be together anyway. Bobby would have to reconcile if they were lost time or not. All of that mass of less alive and waiting. The ending felt fake as hell to me. "It's been a good life. I really can't remember what I was so angry about." Bobby is an old gent with a cane. Did he give up to one time line of gray. His dad has his secrets in his silent chair. Another family and seven brothers and sisters in Mexico. I can't believe I'm saying this about a Beto story that they were never going to be together. Beto was my favorite for the full on lightning follows sounds follows lightning interconnectedness shit.(I like it when Bobby overhears two kids talking about Super Man and he suddenly remembers childhood wasn't all rotten.) Broke my heart in the too late for the mother and daughter to ever understand. I could forget they were drawings and disappear into the can't stand it you're never going to get away from these people. Live and die together. No one else is that real. Bobby isn't that real. He's a logo shirt and trousers waiting to be scarecrowed into someone else's moved. Not when he forgets his dad isn't home anymore. Not when he won't stop asking what are the names of his half brothers and sisters. The mom who had cigarettes before she killed herself. I can't take this nothing in-between. Bobby stopped listening and never got the art of the staring contest down. Damnit but I lived for the staring problem of Beto's stories. Day, the next and the end loses the meaning. I don't think it's the point, in the end, if you did anything with your days. Having something to say for it like "They were good days". The dad probably did forget the names of his other children. He just sits in a chair. Father and son sound and look the same to me. How did he bring it altogether? I didn't feel that part. How does he accept when he's not the beast on their sonic strings. I feel cheated of the most important part.
I've always liked how the women look in Beto's stuff. Often they will have large bottoms in hip hugging trousers. Tight t-shirts and the men ogle them until another one catches their eyes. Somehow they feel like if you stared at them too long you'd feel self conscious of their bodies. I loved it when Bobby comes across again his childhood love, Lorena Madrid. At the time he immortalizes her in his memory (cynically predicting one day he would stand to attention to her younger sister). She's in the record shop, slack eyed. Bobby can't remember why he hates her so much and knows he does. She'll be beautiful to him again. Faithless Bobby fantasies. I like how they are real in their own bodily orbits and kinda despise being tethered to his roving eye. I hate not being in love with a Beto story. That's never happened before. Like Lalo's future telling meant nothing to me about Lalo. Rufus the acid tripper and the father of the Jesus Freak needing to hear his daughter was still a relateable human being inside. I can't deal with margins in Beto stories that don't feel like they would go on without me. No, no, no. Naz has gotta go on making sure everyone heard this everything band until it's just a scene for fun. I can believe there's a weight loss in his music soul, because I know that happens, but it happens without me.
Before he can answer, I change my question and ask where rock music is going.
The Ramones. The Ramones will change rock music for the better.
Bobby is about out of mandatory experience and everyone he has known his whole life are going their ways. Dad is drunk with him, for now, and nodding off. Bobby has the old-baby look as his body sags into the booze and triumph. Arms jerkily akimbo and lost to the taken for granted past or future. Fuck yeah, the New York Dolls. Naz was right! The future is the gray areas around the bright spots of the primal sound. I can't see Bobby with the voice that reaches the wordless places. It's more the animal eye of the storm. It kind of hurts how the world can feel so much the miles of colorless humming. Shouldn't his IT'S ABOUT DAMNED TIME music carry him more than this? I already knew that the people who leave him were 1. Not that with him anyway 2. Had their own empty life spaces. It starts eating the time somewhere in the mouth or maybe the eyes. All of that talking and unseeing. Bobby can be found dying on the way to the next thing. An unmade bed to lie in is still a hole. His childhood friend has an ipad from the future. Sometimes Lalo spouts out knowledge that has no bearing on anything. A half black president or public deaths to dictators. Bobby used to tell him you could make up anything on there as if he knew all about it. Where does the childhood ingenuity go? Is it a myth that kids are born with bull shit detectors. If Bobby had one he sold it out for a dull buzz to cut out his brain. Bobby isn't really tempted to ask about himself. What's there to ask when to move in any direction is the death headlights. What's the next sound? I wish they had listened to any band that I didn't already know about. T-Rex, The Clash, The New York Dolls, Big Star, David Bowie, The Runaways, Roxy Music. The starry sidewalk of there are giant space lizards jamming to their satellites of love in a galaxy far, far away. Weren't there magazines around? Some people are born knowing of everything cool and the rest of us get a miracle of what we need when we really need it. Yeah, I'm greedy for what is going to save my life next. There has got to be buried treasure. All of the music that is created every year. Their guru Naz gets his hands on amounts of vinyl I would see only in my dreams. I would choose my purchases based on what had the most tracks (live albums, usually). Where did these (none seem a bit upper class) kids get all of that dough? How many record stores in Oxnard, California could there be with five finger discounts? Oh well, I just think they didn't appreciate a great thing. I'd count down the days for Christmas and cried when I got Never freaking Let Me Down. What's next when there were all of these riches?! I believe it when all Bobby has are those impossible highs chased in the first time he hears the raw power. I am so thankful I am not him. He looks possessed. In the crowd, alone and they might not be unlike him but still alone. Kid doesn't know the magic of learning how to "play" that song you can't stop listening to in your head. He's like that with girls too. Next, new girl, not her but her. Stupid boy. Life is going to be too long if you go through it like that. Fatter, slowly dying in his chair, beer in hand, acid or speed, heart attacks, false alarm, no real, there's that guy I used to know, get angry so you don't hear what they are saying. Young Bobby tries to not hear the nothing of the day grinds. People look angry. If you could see what they thought about Bobby I bet they'd say the same thing. Old and older Bobby gets good in the way of not listening to anyone in the way that doesn't mean anything. You never knew them anyway and some jobs lay off, husbands don't listen. I don't know. I've been there of spending that time when people work for futures escaping into those voices that make the brief moments feel like they mean something. The awful times when people stop talking to me because I can't account for my time in a way that sounds better than I got carried away on an unbelievable wavelength. It doesn't feel right to me to mix up what anyone else did with their time into it. If the kid with the shitty garage band still sucked or the high school gf who dumped him for God. They weren't going to be together anyway. Bobby would have to reconcile if they were lost time or not. All of that mass of less alive and waiting. The ending felt fake as hell to me. "It's been a good life. I really can't remember what I was so angry about." Bobby is an old gent with a cane. Did he give up to one time line of gray. His dad has his secrets in his silent chair. Another family and seven brothers and sisters in Mexico. I can't believe I'm saying this about a Beto story that they were never going to be together. Beto was my favorite for the full on lightning follows sounds follows lightning interconnectedness shit.(I like it when Bobby overhears two kids talking about Super Man and he suddenly remembers childhood wasn't all rotten.) Broke my heart in the too late for the mother and daughter to ever understand. I could forget they were drawings and disappear into the can't stand it you're never going to get away from these people. Live and die together. No one else is that real. Bobby isn't that real. He's a logo shirt and trousers waiting to be scarecrowed into someone else's moved. Not when he forgets his dad isn't home anymore. Not when he won't stop asking what are the names of his half brothers and sisters. The mom who had cigarettes before she killed herself. I can't take this nothing in-between. Bobby stopped listening and never got the art of the staring contest down. Damnit but I lived for the staring problem of Beto's stories. Day, the next and the end loses the meaning. I don't think it's the point, in the end, if you did anything with your days. Having something to say for it like "They were good days". The dad probably did forget the names of his other children. He just sits in a chair. Father and son sound and look the same to me. How did he bring it altogether? I didn't feel that part. How does he accept when he's not the beast on their sonic strings. I feel cheated of the most important part.
I've always liked how the women look in Beto's stuff. Often they will have large bottoms in hip hugging trousers. Tight t-shirts and the men ogle them until another one catches their eyes. Somehow they feel like if you stared at them too long you'd feel self conscious of their bodies. I loved it when Bobby comes across again his childhood love, Lorena Madrid. At the time he immortalizes her in his memory (cynically predicting one day he would stand to attention to her younger sister). She's in the record shop, slack eyed. Bobby can't remember why he hates her so much and knows he does. She'll be beautiful to him again. Faithless Bobby fantasies. I like how they are real in their own bodily orbits and kinda despise being tethered to his roving eye. I hate not being in love with a Beto story. That's never happened before. Like Lalo's future telling meant nothing to me about Lalo. Rufus the acid tripper and the father of the Jesus Freak needing to hear his daughter was still a relateable human being inside. I can't deal with margins in Beto stories that don't feel like they would go on without me. No, no, no. Naz has gotta go on making sure everyone heard this everything band until it's just a scene for fun. I can believe there's a weight loss in his music soul, because I know that happens, but it happens without me.
August 3, 2015
Bumperhead is a coming of age novel about a boy who measures each generation of his youth by the records he listens to and the girls he fixates on. It was a Seventies thing, and if you grew up in the same generation as him (I did) then you'd understand.
I don't know if younger kids will get some of what's going on here but I hope they hang in there, anyway. I found some of the parallels between this kid's youth to my own pretty eerie but it also made the book more compassionate. I felt Beto was speaking for me.
Bumperhead loses a star because he portrays aging in such a pathetic, gruesome way, virtually feeding into the ageism that's so prevalent these days. Some of us have held up pretty well through the years, Mr. Hernandez!
I don't know if younger kids will get some of what's going on here but I hope they hang in there, anyway. I found some of the parallels between this kid's youth to my own pretty eerie but it also made the book more compassionate. I felt Beto was speaking for me.
Bumperhead loses a star because he portrays aging in such a pathetic, gruesome way, virtually feeding into the ageism that's so prevalent these days. Some of us have held up pretty well through the years, Mr. Hernandez!
October 16, 2014
When I learned that Gilbert Hernandez had a new book out, BUMPERHEAD, and that it was about teenagers, and I had just finished the fantastic MARBLE SEASON, about pre-adolescents, which I gave to my 10-year-old son to read, I thought this was a sequel and told my son as much. He was very excited, as was I, for MARBLE SEASON, he says, is the best book he’s read since WONDER, which is, frankly, the only book he’s been able to read cover to cover. MARBEL SEASON is one of the best books I’ve read in a while, too, and I read a lot of books. It resonates, and haunts me. Because of the more mature content of BUMPERHEAD, and just because I wanted to, I am, after all, the father, I read the book first. I did so in a sitting, and probably should read it again, as it’s not as straight forward as MARBLE SEASON, less innocent, stranger, with intentional anachronisms, but no less emotionally moving and engaging. There’s more going on than I can read in a first pass, but then Hernandez is an artist, not a propagandist. Did I let my son read the book? Hell yes. You should read it, too.
March 3, 2015
The first thought that came to mind when I closed this graphic novel? So what? This is a meandering coming of age story, about a young boy who is bullied, and abandoned by his parents in various ways. There is a log of the girls he crushes on, the music he loves, and the main events of his life from young boy to older man, but the story lacked any emotional impact. The most interesting thing was the iPad subplot. On the plus side, I did like the black and white artwork. I am clearly not the target audience for this one.
September 19, 2014
This is one I have to go back and reread ASAP. I can't help but think I'm missing something here, as I'm not as taken by the book as I usually am by Gilbert's work. This is certainly not a sequel to Marble Season, as some have said it might be. And it doesn't have the punch of that earlier book. Maybe I'll get that punch after some contemplation and another reading.
August 10, 2014
Grabbed a copy of this at SDCC. Another fantastic GN from Beto, and a natural sequel of sorts to Marble Season. I know he's been doing this for over thirty years now or so, but he still seems to be getting better and better somehow.
August 25, 2016
This coming of age story captures how quickly relationships can evolve when adolescents try to define who they are. Sure to make you reflect on some of the choices you made during this pivotal period of your life.
January 1, 2015
I'll have to reread this before I can review it. All I know at this point is that it is totally awesome, my favorite comic book published in 2014!
December 20, 2016
Interesting, disjointed, cyclical and a tad crazy.
August 10, 2016
It's all the same thing. No new tale to tell.
Reading this book is kind of like watching someone shuffle a deck of cards. A series of episodes in the life of a young man named Bobby are both perfectly ordinary and at the same time illuminate what it was like to grow up in a particular era. Bobby, the protagonist, grows up without a lot of parental guidance (mom's dead, dad's not much of a talker). Left to his own devices, he hangs out with friends, drinks, does drugs, crushes on girls, occasionally has sex, and discovers a lot of different kinds of music. He's convinced that after high school all of life's greatest adventures will begin, but the old routines are soon replaced by slightly more adult ones: go to work, come home, do different drugs, wonder when life will get interesting.
Bobby's the kind of character who stumbles around waiting for things to happen, not realizing that you have to go out and make them happen. This could be construed as sad, but as Bobby ages, the reader starts to wonder if maybe this IS all there is, if their own expectations have somehow been too high. The bright spots in his life revolve around discovering new kinds of music (glam, punk, etc.), but even those happy moments, which seem to herald the coming of a whole new world, end up letting him down in the end. Is Bobby's story a tragedy, or a Zen parable of living for the moment and just accepting what is?
Hard to say, but even if you're not all that interested in the story, you'll find yourself sticking around for the art. Nobody draws people like Gil Hernandez. The style is this weird cartoon realism blend where you know, logically, that real people don't LOOK like that, and yet they still somehow look like people you might meet walking down the street. The drawings are broader, and not nearly as detailed as the Love and Rockets illustrations, but it's clear they're set in either the same world or a universe right next door. Recommended for larger graphic novel collections, especially where Hernandez has been popular.
Reading this book is kind of like watching someone shuffle a deck of cards. A series of episodes in the life of a young man named Bobby are both perfectly ordinary and at the same time illuminate what it was like to grow up in a particular era. Bobby, the protagonist, grows up without a lot of parental guidance (mom's dead, dad's not much of a talker). Left to his own devices, he hangs out with friends, drinks, does drugs, crushes on girls, occasionally has sex, and discovers a lot of different kinds of music. He's convinced that after high school all of life's greatest adventures will begin, but the old routines are soon replaced by slightly more adult ones: go to work, come home, do different drugs, wonder when life will get interesting.
Bobby's the kind of character who stumbles around waiting for things to happen, not realizing that you have to go out and make them happen. This could be construed as sad, but as Bobby ages, the reader starts to wonder if maybe this IS all there is, if their own expectations have somehow been too high. The bright spots in his life revolve around discovering new kinds of music (glam, punk, etc.), but even those happy moments, which seem to herald the coming of a whole new world, end up letting him down in the end. Is Bobby's story a tragedy, or a Zen parable of living for the moment and just accepting what is?
Hard to say, but even if you're not all that interested in the story, you'll find yourself sticking around for the art. Nobody draws people like Gil Hernandez. The style is this weird cartoon realism blend where you know, logically, that real people don't LOOK like that, and yet they still somehow look like people you might meet walking down the street. The drawings are broader, and not nearly as detailed as the Love and Rockets illustrations, but it's clear they're set in either the same world or a universe right next door. Recommended for larger graphic novel collections, especially where Hernandez has been popular.
December 10, 2014
Another great graphic novel by Gilbert Hernandez. It's impressive how quickly this guy keeps putting out good work. Bumperhead is about the life of a hispanic outcast named Bobby, from childhood to old age. We see the different stages in his life, his relationship with music (especially punk rock), women, family, and work. It hit close to home for me, even though I've had wildly different experiences for the most part. When you're reading the individual parts of the story they might not seem like much, but once you finish the book and add them all up together, it's something moving. Which I guess is what life is all about.
I do think a smaller format would have been preferable for this book, as it would compliment Beto's beautiful, yet simplified, art style more.
I do think a smaller format would have been preferable for this book, as it would compliment Beto's beautiful, yet simplified, art style more.
January 8, 2015
3.5 is probably more accurate. I completely loved Gilbert's first book for Drawn & Quarterly about adolescence. This one focuses more on teenage years (and beyond). I absolutely love the art that Los Bros Hernandez put out. Gilbert's stories don't typically captivate me, though. These past two (more so than the Palomar stuff) have been great. But this one just didn't resonate with me like Marble Season did. Good, but not great.
January 27, 2015
This was one super strange graphic novel. The rise and fall of a misfit through the lens of 1970's music (Bowie, punk, T Rex, etc.), crazy love triangles, and a Mexican father who has many secrets and is a terrible communicator. I don't know what to say. I picked this up at the library for kicks and enjoyed it. Definitely not uplifting though.
October 8, 2015
What I liked most about this book was the relationship between Bobby and his father, although I was surprised by the father's change in the last section or so, his anger with his disrespectful son. Why had that not happened earlier, given how Bobby was tumbling into his life? Perhaps the fact that Bobby was directly attacking the father and the father's own skeletons. A very sad story.
September 25, 2014
Literally the worst book I've ever read.
December 31, 2014
Kind of aimless and too unfocused to have any kind of emotional impact. I really want to know why that one kid had an iPad though.
October 19, 2024
I went into “Bumperhead” knowing nothing about “Love and Rockets,” “Marble Season,” or the Hernandez brothers.
It’s an odd book. It feels like a graphic memoir but it’s a complete work of fiction. It’s the story of Bobby, the son of a Mexican immigrant father and a deceased-by-suicide mother. Bobby is an outcast and gets lost (or finds himself?) in sex, drugs, and rock n roll. An odd feature, however, is that Bobby’s friend has an iPad in the 70s and sees into the future with it (for example, he sees that the Ramones are going to change rock music forever). The iPad is never explained.
The art is a bit on the simplistic side. It’s all black and white. That being said, it’s a pretty profound book with some deep themes.
It’s an odd book. It feels like a graphic memoir but it’s a complete work of fiction. It’s the story of Bobby, the son of a Mexican immigrant father and a deceased-by-suicide mother. Bobby is an outcast and gets lost (or finds himself?) in sex, drugs, and rock n roll. An odd feature, however, is that Bobby’s friend has an iPad in the 70s and sees into the future with it (for example, he sees that the Ramones are going to change rock music forever). The iPad is never explained.
The art is a bit on the simplistic side. It’s all black and white. That being said, it’s a pretty profound book with some deep themes.
October 16, 2014
Not one of my favorites from Gilbert, one of the brothers who created the Love & Rockets comic book series. This is a graphic novel about Bobby Numbly, or bumperhead as his childhood "friends" call him. We get a glimpse of five different stages of Bobby's life as he wanders thru it like he wasnt part of it. Bobby reacts to almost everything with anger, self contained anger, outwardly he just lets it all pass him by. Easily accepting his lot in life, keeping all his problems to himself. The book starts with a small town under a cloudy sky and even tho decades and a lifetime has passed by the end, it happens under the same dark sky. Nothing gets clearer, and nothing gets answered, because the "hero" just allows it all to happen, and never tries to change a thing. There's probably a way you can say this is about how we all will let things happen, how we separate ourselves from the things that happen to us and around us. I found it a bit disconnected, falling just short of something profound and more just telling us a disjointed story. The bits an pieces are interesting,but, I thought lacked a central theme, just the random acts of Bobby.
There is a way that art tells stories that few can come close to Gilbert and his brothers can. For that alone the book is worth the read. I also recommend the idea that even small events in our everyday lives are stories that are worth telling. The Hernandez brothers do that better then anyone.
There is a way that art tells stories that few can come close to Gilbert and his brothers can. For that alone the book is worth the read. I also recommend the idea that even small events in our everyday lives are stories that are worth telling. The Hernandez brothers do that better then anyone.
May 29, 2018
Gilbert Hernandez's Bumperhead is something of a companion piece to his Marble Season. The earlier book followed the life of a preteen named Huey. Bumperhead covers Bobby's life from elementary school to middle age, but the main focus is on his teenage years and young adulthood after high school. His nickname "Bumperhead" is slang for someone who copies what he sees others doing. He goes through one phase after another, changing lifestyles and musical tastes, one notable period being the punk phase depicted on the cover. As always the story is mainly about relationships: Bobby's friends and girlfriends, and especially his sometimes stormy one with his father (who spends a good deal of the book away in Mexico). He spends a good deal of the book dissatisfied and angry, and is not often given to self-examination. It is only at the end that he reflects that it's been a good life, and he can't remember what he was angry about.
July 10, 2015
Acredito que tem três pessoas na vida que nunca vão em decepcionar: Camus, Gilbert Hernandez e o pizzaiolo da Di Terni.
Bumperhead (de novo) um personagem da infância sendo filho de mexicanos nos EUA, passando por uma adolescência de descobrimentos musicais (iniciando em T-Rex e seguindo pro punk [muita coisa boa aqui fugindo do ramones-sex pistols-clash; X, Germs, etc])na década de 70/80. A marca da ficçao científica fica mais sútil e se apresenta com um amigo que tem im iPod onde ele busca informações do futuro (sem robôs e foguetes dessa vez.
Se eu fosse descrever essa HQ com uma palavra, seria "Foda". Sem mais.
Bumperhead (de novo) um personagem da infância sendo filho de mexicanos nos EUA, passando por uma adolescência de descobrimentos musicais (iniciando em T-Rex e seguindo pro punk [muita coisa boa aqui fugindo do ramones-sex pistols-clash; X, Germs, etc])na década de 70/80. A marca da ficçao científica fica mais sútil e se apresenta com um amigo que tem im iPod onde ele busca informações do futuro (sem robôs e foguetes dessa vez.
Se eu fosse descrever essa HQ com uma palavra, seria "Foda". Sem mais.
June 14, 2017
After reading the whimsical, but somewhat meandering Marble Season, I was hesitant to begin another Gilbert "Beto" Hernandez graphic novel unrelated to Love and Rockets. But, Bumperhead was satisfying in its complexity. Mexican-American Bobby at various ages embracing glam rock and punk, being abandoned by his parents, discovering that his father has another family in Mexico, that he has a heart condition. What would have been unique about Bumperhead was if their childhood with iPads were set in the present but each subsequent chapter as they aged was set deeper in the past. Instead, the setting and timeline are complicated by the anachronistic iPad.
February 25, 2017
It's good, but it's also kind of blah. There's not too much of a story here. It's more a collection of moments, than a story. In seems to be going somewhere towards the middle, but that falls apart before too long. The art is good, but Beto is at this point where he knows exactly what to put in and what to leave out. So you get this perfect representation of a tree, of middle income house, but nothing more than is necessary. At a certain point the drawing is so on the nose that it becomes boring.
October 26, 2018
Hey, it's another one from Beto. It's got that magical realism thing going on. What's that kid in the 70s doing with an iPad? Well, basically he's our outside commentary, a view from the fringes. Our main character here, the unduly harassed Bobby (or Bumperhead), is at the center of this fragmented book.
You might deign to call it a coming-of-age tale where the main character never comes of age. Despite his friend with the iPad who can predict the future, Bobby never really finds a footing. It's just one long slide into despair. He finds solace in punk rock, but who didn't?
You might deign to call it a coming-of-age tale where the main character never comes of age. Despite his friend with the iPad who can predict the future, Bobby never really finds a footing. It's just one long slide into despair. He finds solace in punk rock, but who didn't?
January 1, 2016
Did not like. It skipped around so much! It didn't delve into the character's feelings or what he thought about things most of the times. Which I guess is maybe realistic for a teen boy/young man? I don't know. Everything was just crappy, and it got crappier, and then it was over. Bleh. Oh, and what was up with the one friend having an ipad?? That was never explained beyond "his sci-fi toy." He used it to make music references. I didn't get that.
April 2, 2019
Pour beaucoup cette BD ne vaut pas ma note , pour moi il n'y a rien d'exceptionnel dans cette oeuvre qui vous arrache un bruit de surprise , de mécontentement si ce n'est la fin que j'ai trouve lourde de sens. Il y a pourtant un sentiment , un fil conducteur qui fait que j'ai vraiment apprécié ma lecture. Le recit d'une adolescence torturée ? L'univers du rock , du punk d'une musique lointaine mais pas oubliée ? Du debut jusqu'a la fin il y a comme un souffle.
November 14, 2014
Another OK book from Gilbert Hernandez, my favorite of the Bros Hernandez. It's not that It's bad per se, it's just so 'go-nowhere-ish'(?) that it almost feels like not having a plot is cool to the author. Sure after the Palomar epic he's probably out of stories. It just feels like hes being lazy with his new books except for the Love and Rockets New Stories collections. 2 & 1/2 STARS
June 1, 2015
the iPad thing threw me off - it felt like it was a mistake that he left in and made a weird non-explanation for. one of the flatter Hernandez comics I've read. I've read this narrative before and probably so have you and there's not much that's really fresh about it and not many moments that feel so true that they make up for the rehashedness.
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