The previous side story Jaime Hernandez created for his Locas storyline in Love and Rockets, "God and Science", was a bit of a disappointment for me. However, although Tonta is another such side story, it was well worth it. In it, Jaime digs deeper into the life story of one the most fascinating characters he's created in recent years - Vivian "Frogmouth" Solis - by introducing us to her family in a story focused on her teenage half-sister, the titular Tonta.
Look, on the one hand, Vivian is vapid, selfish, hostile, and self-destructively promiscuous. And as Maggie was warned when she first met her, Vivian brings trouble into the lives of everyone she knows. Yet, Jaime through some miracle of storytelling makes her endlessly engaging and fascinating. Ani Difranco once said, "everyone harbors a secret hatred for the prettiest girl in the room", and this basically sums up Vivian's entire existence. She is devastatingly beautiful, and because of it, has lived her entire life being the object of uncontrolled lust, envy, hatred, and violence - often, all of them at once. In a testament to his unequaled skill for communicating character through his economical drawing style, Vivian's face usually projects anger, or else the thousand yard stare of someone resigned to their fate. And on this count, who could blame her? She rarely gets a break, and doesn't have the foggiest clue what to do with it when she does: the world just won't give her a moment's peace. At the same time, she longs to be vulnerable - to be able to lower her defenses for a moment, just to catch her breath against the constant assault of aggression and objectification launched against her on a moment-by-moment basis. Unfortunately, more often than not, the only means available to her for doing so is to submit to the dominating violence of some ultra-toxic man. Because of this, in earlier stories we can see why she's attracted to Maggie's and Hopey's pals Doyle and Ray Dominguez: although they are aging man-children who occasionally lust after her, they both treat her like a human being.
However, this isn't really Vivian's story, but Tonta's. Tonta, like Vivian, is the product of an extraordinarily dysfunctional family. Their mother has married and had children with a string of men, many of whom have died: murder, suicide, illness. Tonta is trying her best to navigate the ordinary travails of teenage life. She plays around with her identity, crushes on the local teen rock star, experiments sexually with his brother, befriends one of her high school's social pariahs while trying to keep their friendship secret. However, the dark, violent past of her family begins to insert itself into her life, bringing her together with her siblings, including Vivian.
This is not a happy gaggle of brothers and sisters. They have each gone their separate ways, and when they get together, they bicker constantly, sometimes violently. Yet, their coming together is nevertheless somehow poignant as they try to give their mother the comeuppance that is sorely due to her. Along the way, we meet various new characters, and catch up with some old ones - Angel, Maggie's former roommate, most of all. It's definitely a side-story, but it's still well worth our time. I for one hope that it prefigures a long-form story focusing mainly on Vivian in the coming years.