The Girl from H.O.P.P.E.R.S. (Locas, #2)

The 25th anniversary Love and Rockets celebration continues with
this, the second of three volumes collecting the adventures of the
spunky Maggie; her annoying, pixie-ish best friend and sometime lover
Hopey; and their circle of friends, including their bombshell friend
Penny Century, Maggie's weirdo mentor Izzy—as well as the aging but
still heroic wrestler Rena Titañon and Maggie's handsome love interest,
Rand Race. After the sci-fi trappings of his earliest stories (as seen
in Maggie the Mechanic, the first volume in this series),
Hernandez refined his approach, settling on the more naturalistic
environment of the fictional Los Angeles barrio, Hoppers, and the lives
of the young Mexican-Americans and punk rockers who live there. A
central story and one of Jaime's absolute peaks is "The Death of
Speedy." Such is Jaime's mastery that even though the end of the story
is telegraphed from the very title, the downhill spiral of Speedy, the
local heartthrob, is utterly compelling and ultimately quite
surprising. Also in this volume, Maggie begins her on-again off-again
romance with Ray D., leading to friction and an eventual separation
from Hopey.

(Note: A number of these stories, including a whole cycle
of wrestling stories starring or co-starring Rena Titañon, were not
collected in the hardcover Locas.)