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William Cohen

William Sebastian Cohen (born August 28, 1940) is an American lawyer, author, and politician from the U.S. state of Maine. A Republican, Cohen served as both a member of the United States House of Representatives (1973–1979) and Senate (1979–1997), and as Secretary of Defense (1997–2001) under Democratic President Bill Clinton.

Described as "a Republican moderate from Maine" and "something of a maverick centrist" by David Halberstam, Cohen had very good working relations with President Clinton and National Security Adviser Sandy Berger and an "almost ideal" collaboration with the Joint Chiefs of Staff; however he often clashed with Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, whom he saw as "a grandstander, too outspoken on policy matters, and too eager to use military force."

Early life and education
Cohen was born in Bangor, Maine. His mother, Clara (née Hartley), was of Protestant Irish ancestry, and his father, Reuben Cohen, was born in New York and was the son of a Russian Jewish immigrant; the two owned the Bangor Rye Bread Co.

Pursuant to his father's wishes, Cohen was raised Jewish, attended a synagogue, and also attended Hebrew School in preparation for his bar mitzvah, but he decided not to follow through with his bar mitzvah when he was informed that he would have to convert formally to Judaism, and he began to practice Christianity.

After graduating from Bangor High School in 1958, Cohen attended Bowdoin College, graduating cum laude with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Latin in 1962. While a student at Bowdoin, Cohen was initiated as a brother of the Kappa chapter of the Psi Upsilon fraternity.

While in high school and college, Cohen was a basketball player and was named to the Maine all-state high school and college basketball team, and at Bowdoin was inducted into the New England All-Star Hall of Fame. Cohen attended law school at the Boston University School of Law, graduating with a Bachelor of Laws degree cum laude in 1965.

Legal, academic, and early political career
He became an assistant county attorney for Penobscot County (1968–1970). In 1968 he became an instructor at Husson College in Bangor, and later was an instructor in business administration at the University of Maine (1968–1972).

Cohen served as the vice president of the Maine Trial Lawyers Association (1970–1972) and as a member of the Bangor School Board (1971–1972). He became a fellow at Harvard Kennedy School in 1972, and in 1975 was named as one of the U.S. Jaycee's "ten outstanding young men."

Cohen was elected to the Bangor City Council (1969–1972) and served as Bangor Mayor in 1971–1972.

House of Representatives and Senate
In the 1972 election, Cohen won a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, representing Maine's 2nd congressional district, succeeding Democrat William Hathaway, who was elected to the US Senate. Cohen defeated Democratic State Senator Elmer H. Violette of Van Buren.

During his first term in Congress, Cohen was assigned to the House Judiciary Committee, where he participated in the 1974 impeachment hearings against President Richard Nixon. He was one of the first Republicans on the committee to support impeaching Nixon. During this time, Time magazine named him one of "America's 200 Future Leaders". In July 1974, he said,

"I have been faced with the terrible responsibility of assessing the conduct of a President that I voted for, believed to be the best man to lead this country. But a President who in the process by act or acquiescence allowed the rule of law and the Constitution to slip under the boots of indifference and arrogance and abuse."

After three terms in the House, Cohen was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1978, defeating incumbent William Hathaway in his first bid for reelection. Cohen was reelected in 1984 and 1990, serving a total of 18 years in the Senate (1979–1997). In 1990, he defeated Democrat Neil Rolde. Cohen developed a reputation as a moderate Republican with liberal views on social issues and has been described as "a career-long maverick with a reputation for fashioning compromise out of discord."

In 1994 Cohen investigated the federal government's process for acquiring information technology, and his report, Computer Chaos: Billions Wasted Buying Federal Computer Systems, generated much discussion. He chose not to run for another Senate term in 1996; Susan Collins, who had worked for Cohen, was elected to succeed him.

While in the Senate, Cohen served on both the Senate Armed Services Committee and the Governmental Affairs Committee (1979–1997) and was a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee 1983–1991 and again 1995–1997, serving as Vice Chairman from 1987 to 1991. He also participated in the drafting of several notable laws related to defense matters, including the Competition in Contracting Act (1984), the Montgomery G.I. Bill Act (1984), the Goldwater–Nichols Act (1986), the Intelligence Oversight Reform Act (1991), the Federal Acquisition Reform Act (1996), the Nunn–Cohen Act Amendment creating the United States Special Operations Command, and the Information Technology Management Reform Act, also known as the Clinger–Cohen Act (1996). Cohen voted in favor of the bill establishing Martin Luther King Jr. Day as a federal holiday and the Civil Rights Restoration Act of 1987 (as well as to override President Reagan's veto). Cohen voted in favor of the nominations of Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Secretary of Defense
On December 5, 1996, President Bill Clinton announced his selection of Cohen as Secretary of Defense, saying that he was the "right person" to build on the achievements of retiring secretary William Perry "to secure the bipartisan support America's armed forces must have and clearly deserve." As Secretary of Defense Cohen played a large role in directing the United States military actions in Iraq and Kosovo, including the dismissal of Wesley Clark from his post as the NATO Supreme Allied Commander. Both Operation Desert Fox in Iraq and Operation Allied Force in Kosovo were launched just months after al-Qaeda carried out the United States embassy bombings in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania and Nairobi, Kenya in 1998.

Confirmation
During his confirmation hearings, Cohen said he thought he might differ with Clinton on specific national security issues on occasion. He implicitly criticized the Clinton administration for lacking a clear strategy for leaving Bosnia and stated that he thought U.S. troops should definitely be out by mid-1998. He also asserted that he would resist further budget cuts, retain the two regional conflicts strategy, and support spending increases for advanced weapons, even if it necessitated further cuts in military personnel. Cohen questioned whether savings from base closings and acquisition reform could provide enough money for procurement of new weapons and equipment that the Joint Chiefs of Staff thought necessary in the next few years. He supported the expansion of NATO and looked on the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction as the most serious problem the United States faced.

After confirmation by a unanimous Senate vote, Cohen was sworn in as the 20th Secretary of Defense on January 24, 1997. He then settled into a schedule much fuller than he had followed in the Senate. Routinely he arrived at the Pentagon before 7 a.m., received an intelligence briefing, and then met with the Deputy Secretary of Defense (John Hamre 1997–2000, Rudy de Leon 2000–2001) and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (Gen. Hugh Shelton). The rest of the day he devoted to policy and budget briefings, visits with foreign and other dignitaries, and to what he termed "ABC" meetings at the White House with Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and National Security Advisor Sandy Berger as well as President Bill Clinton. He also traveled abroad several times during his first months in office.

Defense budget
One of Cohen's first major duties was to present to Congress the fiscal year 1998 defense budget, which had been prepared under Secretary Perry. Cohen requested a $250.7 billion budget, which represented 3 percent of the nation's estimated gross domestic product for FY 1998. Cohen stressed three top budget priorities: people (recruiting and retaining skilled people through regular military pay raises, new construction or modernization of barracks, and programs for child care, family support, morale, welfare, and recreation), readiness (support for force readiness, training, exercises, maintenance, supplies, and other essential needs), and modernization (development and upgrading of weapon and supporting systems to guarantee the combat superiority of U.S. forces). This meant increasing the funds available for procurement of new systems, with the target set at $60 billion by FY2001.

When he presented the FY1998 budget, Cohen noted that he would involve himself with the Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR), which would focus on the challenges to U.S. security and the nation's military needs over the next decade or more. When the QDR became public in May 1997, it did not fundamentally alter the military's budget, structure, and doctrine. Many defense experts thought it gave insufficient attention to new forms of warfare, such as terrorist attacks, electronic sabotage, and the use of chemical and biological agents. Cohen stated that the Pentagon would retain the "two regional wars" scenario adopted after the end of the Cold War. He decided to scale back purchases of jet fighters, including the Air Force's F-22 Raptor and the Navy's F/A-18E/F Super Hornet, as well as Navy surface ships. The review included cutting another 61,700 active duty service members—15,000 in the Army, 26,900 in the Air Force, 18,000 in the Navy, and 1,800 in the Marine Corps, as well as 54,000 reserve forces, mainly in the Army National Guard, and some 80,000 civilians department-wide. Cohen also recommended two more rounds of base closings in 1999 and 2001. The Pentagon hoped to save $15 billion annually over the next few years to make possible the purchase of new equipment and weapon systems without a substantial budget increase above the current level of $250 billion.

International relations and situations

Cohen faced the question of the expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, which he supported and its relationship to Russia. At a summit meeting between President Clinton and Russian President Boris Yeltsin in Helsinki, Finland, in March 1997, Yeltsin acknowledged the inevitability of broader NATO membership. Two months later he agreed, after negotiations with NATO officials, to sign an accord providing for a new permanent council. The council would include Russia, the NATO secretary general, and a representative of the other NATO nations, to function as a forum in which Russia could air a wide range of security issues which it was concerned about. Formal signing of this agreement would pave the way for a July 1997 invitation from NATO to several nations, probably including Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic to join the organization.

The proposed U.S. missile defense system received attention at the Helsinki summit, where Clinton and Yeltsin agreed to an interpretation of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty allowing the United States to proceed with a limited missile defense system currently under development. Specifically, Clinton and Yeltsin agreed to distinguish between a national missile defense system, aimed against strategic weapons, not allowed by the ABMT, and a theater missile defense system to guard against shorter range missile attacks. Some critics thought that any agreement of this kind would place undesirable limits on the development of both theater and strategic missile defenses. The Helsinki meeting also saw progress in arms control negotiations between the United States and Russia, a matter high on Cohen's agenda. Yeltsin and Clinton agreed on the need for early Russian ratification of the Second Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START II) and negotiation of START III to make further significant cuts in the strategic nuclear arsenals of both nations.

At least until mid-1998, the continuation of the existing peacekeeping mission involving U.S. forces in Bosnia and the possibility that other such missions would arise worried Cohen, who earlier had expressed reservations about such operations. Humanitarian efforts that did not involve peacekeeping, such as in Rwanda in the recent past, also seemed likely. Other persistent national security problems, including tension with Iraq in the Persian Gulf area, Libya in North Africa, and North Korea in East Asia, could flare up again, as could the Arab–Israeli conflict.

In preparing future budgets, the challenge would be to find the right mix between money for operation and maintenance accounts on the one hand and modernization procurement funds on the other, while facing the prospect of a flat DoD budget of about $250 billion annually for the next decade or so. A relatively new problem that could affect the DoD budget was vertical integration in the defense industry. It occurred on a large scale in the 1990s as mergers of major defense contractors created a few huge dominant companies, particularly in the aerospace industry. They were called vertical because they incorporated most of the elements of the production process, including parts and subcomponents. Cohen and other Pentagon leaders began to worry that vertical integration could reduce competition and in the long run increase the costs of what the Department of Defense had to buy.

Social issues
In December 1999, Cohen ordered an immediate review of the Clinton administration's controversial "don't ask, don't tell" policy regarding the status and treatment of gays and lesbians in the U.S. military. The order was given shortly after the president said publicly that the policy was not working. During his tenure as Defense Secretary, Cohen also had to address various other social issues, including: the role of women in combat as well as in other military jobs, racism, and sexual harassment.

Recent years
After leaving the Pentagon in 2001, Cohen founded The Cohen Group, a business consulting firm, with three Pentagon officials, Bob Tyrer, Jim Bodner, and H.K. Park. Cohen was presented with the Woodrow Wilson Award for Public Service by the Woodrow Wilson Center of the Smithsonian Institution on March 7, 2002, in New York City.

On January 5, 2006, he participated in a meeting at the White House of former Secretaries of Defense and State to discuss United States foreign policy with Bush administration officials.

Cohen has written several books, including mysteries, poetry, and (with George Mitchell) an analysis of the Iran–Contra affair. He is a Chairman Emeritus of the US–Taiwan Business Council. The Washington Post ran an article entitled "From Public Life to Private Business" about Cohen's abrupt transition to the business of Washington lobbying within "weeks of leaving office." (May 28, 2006). It discussed the affairs of the Cohen Group in greater detail and, while alleging no specific impropriety, took a generally negative view of the former Senator and Secretary of Defense.

On August 21, 2006, Cohen's novel, Dragon Fire, was released. The plot revolves around a secretary of defense who contends with a potential nuclear threat from a foreign country. In December 2006, he released a memoir with his wife, author Janet Langhart, entitled Love in Black and White, a memoir about race, religion, and the love couple shares over similar life circumstances and backgrounds. He then appeared on The Daily Show (August 22, 2006) and on Fox & Friends First (August 25, 2006), where he said to host Brian Kilmeade, "I think there should be a commitment to universal service. I think that only a few people are really committed to this war against terrorism.... We ought to have a real call to national service to commit ourselves to some form of public service...to put us on a war footing mentality."

BBC News hired Cohen as a world affairs analyst in May 2016. Cohen appears in this capacity on BBC World News America and other broadcasts.

Cohen and Madeleine Albright co-chaired a "Genocide Prevention Task Force". Their appointment was criticized by Harut Sassounian and by the Armenian National Committee of America.

Cohen serves as an advisory board member for the Partnership for a Secure America and is also a member of the ReFormers Caucus of Issue One. In addition, he serves as a board member of the U.S.-China Business Council, having served as vice-chairman between 2011 and 2013, and the U.S.-India Business Council.

During the 2016 presidential election, Cohen joined many Republicans in breaking with party ranks to oppose the candidacy of Republican nominee Donald Trump. He endorsed Democratic nominee former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. In the 2020 election, Cohen again announced his support for the Democratic presidential candidate, endorsing Joe Biden. However, he also endorsed incumbent Republican Maine Senator Susan Collins for re-election.

Cohen, along with all of the living former secretaries of defense, ten in total, published a Washington Post op-ed piece in January 2021 telling President Trump not to involve the military in determining the outcome of the 2020 elections.

In July 2022, Cohen helped found a group of U.S. business and policy leaders who share the goal of constructively engaging with China in order to improve U.S.-China relations.

Personal life
In 1987, Cohen filed for divorce from his first wife, Diana Dunn, with whom he has two sons, Kevin and Christopher. On February 14, 1996, Cohen and Janet Langhart were married. Langhart is a former model, Boston television personality, and BET correspondent. She was known as the "First Lady of the Pentagon" during Cohen's tenure as secretary.

Cohen served as best man in then-Senate Naval Liaison John McCain's second wedding (Gary Hart was a groomsman). McCain later became his Senate colleague.

According to The New York Times, Cohen was considered a loner in Congress.

He is a Unitarian Universalist. At one point in 2007, he considered reconciling with Judaism and agreed to once again attend a synagogue.

Attack at Holocaust Museum
On the afternoon of June 10, 2009, Cohen was at the U.S. Holocaust Museum waiting for his wife Janet Langhart who was to perform in the world premiere of her one-act play Anne and Emmett. The play imagines a conversation between Anne Frank and Emmett Till. While Cohen waited, an elderly man with a slide-action rifle attacked the facility, fatally shooting a security guard—Museum Special Police Officer Stephen Tyrone Johns—before the attacker himself was wounded by the other guards. Cohen and Langhart were not injured, and appeared on CNN that afternoon to tell what they had seen and respond to the shooter's racist beliefs. The man was James W. von Brunn, 88, of Annapolis, a longtime "hard-core" white supremacist whose Internet writings contain extensive criticism against Jews and African Americans. He was charged in federal court with first-degree murder and was indicted by a federal grand jury on seven counts, including hate-crime charges. Langhart's play had been promoted in The Washington Post the week before, and was being presented in honor of the eightieth anniversary of Anne Frank's birth.

Honors

 * JPN Kyokujitsu-sho 1Class BAR.svg Grand Cordon of the Order of the Rising Sun, Japan (2018)

Recent publications

 * July 7, 2009, "On Common Ground", Forbes magazine
 * June 8, 2009, "Smart Power Is Soft Power", Politico
 * June 3, 2009, "Nuclear Cooperation with U.A.E. in Our Interest", The Hill
 * May 28, 2009, "Obama's chance to cement ties with India", Financial Times
 * May 28, 2009, "No Time to Cut Missile Defense", The Washington Times
 * April 23, 2009, "The World Depends on U.S.-China Cooperation", The Wall Street Journal
 * September 30, 2008, "The India Nuclear Deal: The Merits", Forbes magazine
 * December 30, 2007, "Changing Our Direction", www.nationalinterest.org
 * August 12, 2007, "What Is This Man Thinking?", The Washington Post
 * February 5, 2007, "Perfect Partners", Asian Wall Street Journal
 * July 17, 2007, "Commentary: North Korea's Declaration of Independence", CNN

title: William Cohen


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Love and Rockets (comics)

Love and Rockets (often abbreviated L&R) is a comic book series by the Hernandez brothers: Gilbert, Jaime, and Mario. It was one of the first comic books in the alternative comics movement of the 1980s.

The Hernandez brothers produce stories in the series independently of each other. Gilbert and Jaime produce the majority of the material, and tend to focus on particular casts of characters and settings. Those of Gilbert usually focus on a cast of characters in the fictional Central American village of Palomar; the stories often feature magic realist elements. The Locas stories of Jaime center on a social group in Los Angeles, particularly the Latin-American friends and sometime-lovers Maggie and Hopey.

Publication history
The brothers Gilbert, Jaime, and Mario Hernandez self-published the first issue of Love and Rockets in 1981. In 1982, Fantagraphics Books republished this issue with a color cover. The series was published at magazine size, larger than typical American comic books. Either Gilbert or Jaime, the series' main contributors, would provide the front cover for a given issue, and the other the back; they alternated these duties each issue. The first volume ended with the 50th issue in 1996. The second volume ran for twenty issues from 2001 to 2007 in standard US comic book size. A third series, Love and Rockets: New Stories, which ran for eight issues, began in 2008, published annually in 100-page, graphic novel-sized issues. In 2016, the series returned to its original, magazine-sized format.

Overview
The Hernandez brothers self-published the first issue of Love and Rockets in 1981, but since 1982 it has been published by Fantagraphics Books. The brothers sent a copy of their self-published comic to The Comics Journal, an imprint of Fantagraphics, for a review. Gary Groth was so impressed with it that the company offered them a publishing deal. The magazine temporarily ceased publication in 1996 after the release of issue #50, while Gilbert and Jaime went on to do separate series involving many of the same characters. However, in 2001 "Los Bros Hernandez" (as they are often referred to) revived the series as Love and Rockets Volume 2.

Love and Rockets contains several ongoing serial narratives, the most prominent being Gilbert's Palomar stories and Jaime's Hoppers 13 (aka Locas) stories. It also contains one-offs, shorter stories, surrealist jokes, and more.

Palomar tells the story of a fictional village in Latin America and its inhabitants. Its vibrant characters and sometimes-fantastic events are sometimes compared to the magical realism literary style of authors such as Gabriel García Márquez and Jorge Luis Borges. The series is also sometimes referred to as Heartbreak Soup, after the first story set in Palomar.

Hoppers 13 follows the tangled lives of a group of primarily chicano characters, from their teenage years in the early days of the California punk scene to the present day. Hoppers, or Huerta, is a fictional city based on the Hernandezes' home town of Oxnard, California. Two memorable members of Jaime's cast are Margarita "Maggie" Luisa Chascarrillo and Esperanza "Hopey" Leticia Glass, whose on-again, off-again romance is a focus for many Hoppers 13 storylines. The series is also often called Locas (Spanish for "crazy women") because of the many quirky female characters depicted.

The original runs of Palomar and Locas have each been collected in recent one-volume editions by Fantagraphics (see Palomar (graphic novel)), although not all of the stories involving "Locas" and "Palomar" characters are contained in these collections. The original fifty-issue Love and Rockets Volume One has also been reprinted in its entirety in both a fifteen-volume paperback library, and more recently a seven-volume mass-market paperback series by Fantagraphics. In addition, several hardcovers collect edited versions of the series tales.

Many attempts have been made to make L&R into a movie, or series of movies. The movie rights had been held up in litigation for over 15 years. Gilbert Hernandez publicly announced in Toronto, Ontario in May 2013 that a deal had been struck to make a movie out of his "Palomar" story-line and that he was currently writing the script.

Jaime

 * Margarita Luisa "Maggie" Chascarrillo: called "Perla" by her family; best friend (and occasional girlfriend) of Hopey; otherwise dates men, most prominently Ray Dominguez. She befriended Hopey in the punk rock scene of their southern Californian hometown and briefly becomes a world-travelling mechanic who goes on science-fiction flavored adventures in the early issues. Maggie and Hopey were ranked #95 on Wizard Magazine's 200 Greatest Comic Book Characters of all time.
 * Esperanza Leticia "Hopey" Glass: sharp-tongued, wild and adventurous best friend of Maggie. A lesbian who plays bass in a series of punk bands, often touring and furthering her adventures/story.
 * Beatríz "Penny Century" García: bombshell friend to Maggie/Hopey and wife of the ridiculously wealthy H.R. Costigan. She aspires to become a superhero.
 * Isabel Maria "Izzy" Ortiz Reubens: Friend/mentor to Maggie and a sister of Speedy. Izzy is a writer who suffers a nervous breakdown after a divorce/abortion, becoming a notorious "witch lady" in Hoppers.
 * Daphne "Daffy" Matsumoto: a rich, naive young friend of Maggie and Hopey who is a prominent supporting character in the early comics, but later goes off to college.
 * Ray Dominguez: one of Maggie's boyfriends, a painter. Jaime follows his life from Hoppers to LA.
 * Doyle Blackburn: Ray's childhood friend, who struggles with a history of violence.
 * Rena "La Toña" Titañon and Vicki Glori: championship rivals in the world of women's Mexican wrestling. Rena is Maggie's friend and (through her many adventures) a loved (and hated) Latin American revolutionary icon. Vicki, later a wrestling coach and league official, is Maggie's aunt and her guardian during her Huerta years.
 * Danita Lincoln: Maggie's coworker at Vandy's. She dates Ray after Maggie leaves town, also works as a stripper with Doyle's girlfriend Lily.
 * H.R. Costigan: horned billionaire who has an open marriage with Penny Century.
 * Theresa "Terry" Downe: talented, cold, pretty guitar player who still pines for ex-girlfriend Hopey.
 * Rand Race: handsome, world-famous mechanic who hires Maggie and takes her on adventures, oblivious to her crush on him because of his infatuation with former girlfriend Penny Century.
 * Eulalio "Speedy" Ortiz: Isabel's brother, a member of the local "Hoppers" gang, shared a mutual crush on Maggie until his untimely death. The character is the inspiration for the popular rock group Speedy Ortiz.
 * Esther Chascarillo: Maggie's younger sister. Maggie calls her "Esther Babies" or "Babies". She has a brief relationship with Speedy.

Gilbert

 * Luba: no-nonsense, hammer-wielding, promiscuous, enormously busty bañadora (bath giver) who rises to mayor of Palomar and has a complex history before coming to town.
 * Luba's children: Maricela, Guadalupe, Doralis, Casimira, Socorro, Joselito, Concepción.
 * Luba's lovers: Archie, Khamo, Peter, Jose.
 * Ofelia: Luba's cousin who helped raise her and her children.
 * Heraclio and Carmen: a loving couple who served as central characters for many early Palomar stories.
 * Israel, Satch, Vicente, Jesús: Heraclio and Pipo's childhood gang of friends.
 * Chelo: sheriff of Palomar, midwife who delivered many of the main characters.
 * Pipo, Gato, Sergio: beautiful, vain, successful Pipo; her angry but devoted (ex-)husband Gato, and her son (by Manuel) Sergio, a world-famous soccer star.
 * Tonantzín Villaseñor: beautiful, hard-partying girl who sells fried babosos (slugs) and later becomes passionately politically active.
 * Manuel and Soledad: friends/lovers/rivals, stars of the first Palomar story "Heartbreak Soup"
 * Fritz, Petra, Venus: Fritz and Petra are Luba's long-lost half-sisters who share her voluptuous figure and penchant for adventure. Venus is Petra's precocious, comics-loving daughter.
 * María: Luba's mother, who abandoned her when she was a toddler. She emigrated to United States and became mother to Fritz and Petra.
 * Errata Stigmata: a somewhat surreal character who develops stigmata as a reaction to severe emotional trauma. Her first appearance was in "Radio Zero" and her origin is told in "Tears from Heaven".

Landmark stories
This list provides an example of the types of stories that helped Love and Rockets gain critical acclaim.

Jaime

 * Mechanics – the original "Maggie the mechanic" story, in which Maggie travels to Africa with a group of mechanics and becomes caught in the middle of a political revolution. Introduced Jaime's artwork and storytelling style.
 * The Death of Speedy – Jaime moves away from the "Maggie the mechanic" stories to permanently settle on adventures in Maggie's personal life. Maggie's longtime crush Speedy dies in his car either by suicide or a rival gang (it's left ambiguous). She also begins dating the understated artist Ray.
 * Flies on the Ceiling – the story of Izzy Reubens' nervous breakdown in Mexico, where she moves after an abortion and a divorce.
 * Wigwam Bam – Hopey leaves Maggie and her hometown of Hoppers to find adventures, dealing with being too old for her punk rock lifestyle.
 * Home School – using Peanuts and Dennis the Menace inspired artwork, Jaime tells the story of toddler Maggie and slightly -older Isabel becoming friends under the shadow of fighting parents.
 * The Ghost of Hoppers – grown-up Maggie, now an apartment manager in the San Fernando valley, sees visions of ghosts after a creepy visit from Izzy (from Love and Rockets Vol. 2).
 * The Love Bunglers – a middle-aged Maggie comes into her own and comes to terms with Hopey and Ray (from Love and Rockets: New Stories #3–4).

Gilbert

 * Heartbreak Soup – first Palomar story. Tells the story of notorious ladies' man Manuel, and his affair with beautiful 14-year-old Pipo, and its effect on his friendship with repressed misanthrope Soledad.
 * An American in Palomar – a self-important American photographer tries to frame Palomar as a downtrodden, poverty-stricken town to further his own career.
 * For the Love of Carmen – a one-issue meditation on the marriage of Heraclio and Carmen Calderon, citizens of Palomar.
 * Human Diastrophism (also known as Blood of Palomar) – Palomar's residents hunt for a serial killer as Luba finds herself helplessly in love with a young construction worker, and hard-partying Tonantzín becomes politically active. Published in book form under the title Blood of Palomar.
 * Poison River – an immensely complex story of Luba's pre-Palomar life. Details a plot involving the Mexican government, the mob, trans women, racist comic books, and Luba's beauty queen mother and indigenous laborer father.
 * Love and Rockets X – mostly set outside of Palomar, a young, white garage band named Love and Rockets runs into racism between blacks and whites; as well as clashes between rich and poor through Los Angeles. Set near the time of the 1992 Los Angeles riots.

Graphic novels and collections
All published at Fantagraphics: Fantagraphics stopped numbering the series after 24. Not included on the list are a trio of books by Gilbert Hernandez depicting the filmography of B movie actress Fritz Martinez, Luba's youngest sister: Chance in Hell (September 2007), The Troublemakers (December 2009) and Love from the Shadows (May 2011).
 * 1) Music for Mechanics by Los Bros Hernandez, October 1985, 152 pages Preface by Carter Scholz
 * 2) Chelo's Burden by Los Bros Hernandez, June 1986, 144 pages Preface by Gary Groth
 * 3) Las Mujeres Perdidas by Los Bros Hernandez (only Gilbert and Jaime), August 1987, 160 pages
 * 4) Tears from Heaven by Los Bros Hernandez (Gilbert and Jaime; one cover by Mario), January 1988, 136 pages
 * 5) House of Raging Women, by Los Bros Hernandez (only Gilbert and Jaime from now on), September 1988, 136 pages
 * 6) Duck Feet by Los Bros Hernandez, September 1988, 136 pages
 * 7) The Death of Speedy by Jaime Hernandez, November 1989, 136 pages
 * 8) Blood of Palomar by Gilbert Hernandez, December 1989, 128 pages
 * 9) Flies on the Ceiling by Los Bros Hernandez (principally Jaime), October 1991, 128 pages
 * 10) Love and Rockets X by Gilbert Hernandez, July 1993, 72 pages
 * 11) Wigwam Bam by Jaime Hernandez, March 1994, 136 pages
 * 12) Poison River by Gilbert Hernandez, September 1994, 192 pages
 * 13) Chester Square by Jaime Hernandez, July 1996, 160 pages
 * 14) Luba Conquers the World by Gilbert Hernandez, December 1996, 136 pages
 * 15) Hernandez Satyricon by Los Bros Hernandez (Mario, Gilbert & Jaime Hernandez) August 1997, 160 pages
 * 16) Whoa Nellie! by Jaime Hernandez, June 2000, 80 pages
 * 17) Fear of Comics by Gilbert Hernandez, October 2000, 120 pages
 * 18) Locas in Love by Jaime Hernandez, October 2000, 120 pages (End of Volume 1)
 * 19) Luba in America ("Luba", Tome 1), by Gilbert Hernandez, 2001, 168 pages (Beginning of Volume 2)
 * 20) Dicks and Deedees by Jaime Hernandez, June 2003, 96 pages
 * 21) The Book of Ofelia ("Luba", Tome 2), by Gilbert Hernandez, December 2005, 256 pages
 * 22) Ghost of Hoppers by Jaime Hernandez, December 2005, 120 pages
 * 23) Three Daughters ("Luba", Tome 3), by Gilbert Hernandez, August 2006, 144 pages
 * 24) The Education of Hopey Glass, by Jaime Hernandez, April 2008, 128 pages
 * 25) High Soft Lisp by Gilbert Hernandez, April 2010, 144 pages
 * 26) God and Science: Return of the Ti-Girls, by Jaime Hernandez, July 2012, 144 pages
 * 27) Julio's Day by Gilbert Hernandez, April 2013, 112 pages
 * 28) The Children of Palomar  by Gilbert Hernandez, August 2013, 104 pages (part of the Ignatz series)
 * 29) The Love Bunglers by Jaime Hernandez, April 2014, 100 pages
 * 30) Is This How You See Me? by Jaime Hernandez, April 2019, 96 pages
 * 31) Tonta by Jaime Hernandez, July 2019, 104 pages
 * 32) Maria M. (includes volumes 1 & 2, the first part published November 2013) by Gilbert Hernandez, October 2019, 270 pages

Omnibus editions
Volume 1 was re-released in smaller "omnibus" style trade paperbacks. Starting in 2010, volume 2's stories began getting re-releases as well. In 2018, the New Stories began being collected among the "omnibus" paperbacks.
 * 1) Maggie the Mechanic, by Jaime Hernandez (Locas Book 1, from Volume I), 272 pages (2007)
 * 2) The Girl from H.O.P.P.E.R.S., by Jaime Hernandez (Locas Book 2, from Volume I), 272 pages (2007)
 * 3) Perla la Loca, by Jaime Hernandez (Locas Book 3, from Volume I), 288 pages (2007)
 * 4) Heartbreak Soup, by Gilbert Hernandez (Palomar Book 1, from Volume I), 288 pages (2007)
 * 5) Human Diastrophism, by Gilbert Hernandez (Palomar Book 2, from Volume I), 288 pages (2007)
 * 6) Beyond Palomar, by Gilbert Hernandez (Palomar Book 3, from Volume I), 256 pages (2007)
 * 7) Amor Y Cohetes, by Jaime, Gilbert & Mario Hernandez (Non-Locas and Palomar comics from Volume I), 280 pages (2008)
 * 8) Penny Century, by Jaime Hernandez (Locas Book 4, from the "Penny Century", "Whoa, Nellie!", and "Maggie and Hopey Color Fun" comics, plus Volume II), 240 pages (2010)
 * 9) Esperanza, by Jaime Hernandez (Locas Book 5, from Volume II), 248 pages (2011)
 * 10) Luba and Her family, by Gilbert Hernandez (Luba Book 1, from Volume II), 312 pages (2014)
 * 11) Ofelia, by Gilbert Hernandez (Luba Book 2, from Volume II), 256 pages (2015)
 * 12) Comics Dementia, by Gilbert Hernandez (Non-Locas and Palomar comics from Volume I and II), 224 pages (2016)
 * 13) Angels and Magpies, by Jaime Hernandez (Locas Book 6, "God and Science: Return of the Ti-Girls" and "The Love Bunglers" from New Stories), 260 pages (2018)
 * 14) Three Sisters, by Gilbert Hernandez (Luba book 3, from "Luba: Three Daughters", "High Soft Lisp", and more), 280 pages (2018)
 * 15) Children of Palomar & Other Stories, by Gilbert & Mario Hernandez (Palomar book 5, from "Julio's Day", "Children of Palomar, and uncollected non-Palomar stories by Gilbert and Mario), 280 pages (2022)

Hardcovers
Edited segments of both the Palomar and the Maggie stories are available in hardcover format.
 * 1) Locas: The Maggie and Hopey Stories by Jaime Hernandez (2004)
 * 2) Locas II: Maggie, Hopey, and Ray by Jaime Hernandez (2009)
 * 3) Palomar: The Heartbreak Soup Stories by Gilbert Hernandez (2003)
 * 4) Luba by Gilbert Hernandez (2009)

New stories
The series continues in annual trade paperbacks, entitled Love & Rockets: New Stories. To date, eight exist:
 * 1) New Stories, volume 1, 112 pages (2008)
 * 2) New Stories, volume 2, 104 pages (2009)
 * 3) New Stories, volume 3, 104 pages (2010)
 * 4) New Stories, volume 4, 104 pages (2011)
 * 5) New Stories, volume 5, 96 pages (2012)
 * 6) New Stories, volume 6, 100 pages (2013)
 * 7) New Stories, volume 7, 100 pages (2015)
 * 8) New Stories, volume 8, 100 pages (2016)

In 2012, Jaime Hernandez's individual stories from the first two volumes of New Stories were collected into a single volume, entitled God and Science: Return of the Ti-Girls, which also included about 30 new pages of comics.

In 2014, Jaime Hernandez's stories from volumes 3 and 4 of New Stories were collected into a single volume entitled The Love Bunglers.

Volume IV
In 2016, Fantagraphics began releasing Volume IV of Love and Rockets.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Love and Rockets (comics)


text:
Jim (comics)

Jim is a comic book series by Jim Woodring. It began in 1980 as a self-published zine and was picked up by Fantagraphics Books in 1986 after cartoonist Gil Kane introduced Woodring to Fantagraphics co-owner Gary Groth. The publisher released four magazine-sized black-and-white issues starting in September 1987. A comic book-sized continuation, Jim Volume II, with some color, began in 1993 and ran for six issues until 1996.

Jim, which Woodring described as an "autojournal", contained comics on a variety of subjects, many based on dreams, as well as surreal drawings and free-form text which resembled Jimantha automatic writing. Besides dreams, the work drew on Woodring's childhood experiences, hallucinations, past alcoholism, and Hindu beliefs. It also included stories of recurring Woodring characters such as Pulque (the embodiment of drunkenness), boyhood friends Chip and Monk, and, in Volume II, his signature creation Frank.

Content
Jim is made up of a variety of short comics, text pieces, and artwork. Most of the works are short comics based on Woodring's dreams. Some of the pieces are surreal parodies of advertisements in the Mad tradition.

Publication
The series began as a photocopied 12-page minicomic that Woodring self-published in 1980. The contents were drawn from Woodring's autojournal—a journal in which he recorded his dreams in comics, prose, drawings, and paintings. Fantagraphics Books co-owner Gary Groth began publishing the series; the four issues of the first volume ran from 1987 to 1990.

Most of the contents of the first volume were reprinted in the book collection The Book of Jim in 1993. A collection of both volumes appeared in 2014 under the title Jim, subtitled Jim Woodring's Notorious Autojournal.

Vol. I

 * 1) (Sep. 1987)
 * 2) (Jan. 1988)
 * 3) (Jan. 1989)
 * 4) (Oct. 1990)

Vol. II

 * 1) (Dec. 1993)
 * 2) *Manhog Beyond the Face (color)
 * 3) *Quarry Story
 * 4) (April 1994)
 * 5) *untitled Frank story (color)
 * 6) *untitled
 * 7) *untitled Pulque story (color)
 * 8) *untitled Big Red story
 * 9) (July 1994)
 * 10) *untitled
 * 11) *Authorized Only (digital color)
 * 12) *The Reform of the Apple
 * 13) (Dec. 1994, printed Nov. 1994)
 * 14) *Frank and the Toy without Pity
 * 15) *untitled Frank story (color)
 * 16) *Frank in the Cave of his Ancestors
 * 17) (May 1995)
 * 18) *Dive Deep
 * 19) *Peeker (color)
 * 20) *The Stairs
 * 21) *Frank and the Sugar of Vengeance
 * 22) *Echo (inside back cover)
 * 23) (May 1996, printed April 1996)
 * 24) *Obviously Not
 * 25) *untitled Chip and Monk story
 * 26) *Boyfriend of the Weather

Reception
Comics critic Joe McCulloch stated, "What Woodring did better than anyone was promote the idea that the subconscious, the imaginary, and the dreamtime state were perfectly valid terrains for autobiographical exploration" at a time when the confessional work of Justin Green and the mundane stories of Harvey Pekar defined the range of autobiographical comics.

Jim ranked No. 71 on The Comics Journal's list of the hundred greatest English-language comics of the 20th century.

title: Jim (comics)


text:
Frank (comics)

Frank is a cartoon character created by American cartoonist Jim Woodring. Frank is a bipedal, bucktoothed animal of uncertain species whom Woodring described as a "generic anthropomorph". The stories and supporting characters appear in a world called the Unifactor.

Overview
Frank is a bipedal anthropomorphic animal character of uncertain species—what his creator Jim Woodring describes as a "generic anthropomorph". The surreal, symbolic, and pantomimic stories take place in an idyllic world of mysterious forces called the Unifactor. Woodring describes Frank as "11 years old ... covered with short, dense fur like a mole's ... innocent but not noble ... mortal and must someday die". His pets and protectors Pupshaw and Pushpaw accompany him on his wanderings through the Unifactor, where he encounters colorful, top-shaped jivas, geometrically shaped Jerry Chickens, the diabolic moon-faced Whim, his "Faux Pa" (or "false father"), and the avaricious Manhog. Frank is prey to his temptations and subverts expectations by not always triumphing; despite the consequences he undergoes, he never learns from his experiences.

Publication history
The first published drawing of Frank was the cover of Jim #4, and the first comic story featuring the character was in Buzz #2, the Kitchen Sink Press-published comics anthology. Frank was a regular feature in the Tantalizing Stories series by Woodring and Mark Martin, and dominated that comic's inaugural special issue, Tantalizing Stories Presents Frank in the River. When Tantalizing Stories ended Frank became a recurring feature in Jim Volume II; in 1996 he got his own self-titled comic series which ran for four issues. A long Frank story titled Frank's Real Pa also appeared in 1994's The Millennium Whole Earth Catalog and was later released as a comic book. Two book collections of the Frank stories were released in 1994 and 1997. In 2003 The Frank Book collected nearly all of the previously published Frank stories as well as the conclusion of "Frank's High Horse", a serialized story that had been left unfinished at the end of the Frank comic book. In 2005 a standalone, limited-release comic The Lute String was released, and beginning in 2010 two full-length graphic novels featuring Frank were published.

Frank series
From 1996 to 2001 Fantagraphics put out four issues of Woodring's series Frank. All but the first issue included one color story. The ending to "Frank's High Horse"—the first two installments of which appeared in the last two issues of Frank—was only published when Fantagraphics put out the deluxe The Frank Book in 2003 (it was later included in The Portable Frank as well).

Characters
The stories involving these characters occur in the surreal world Woodring calls the Unifactor.
 * Frank:A bipedal, bucktoothed animal of uncertain species with a short tail, described by Woodring as a "generic anthropomorph" and "naive but not innocent", "completely naive, capable of sinning by virtue of not knowing what he's really about." The character design is reminiscent of those found in American animated shorts from the 1920s and 1930s, such as from Fleischer Studios. Usually he appears in black and white, but when he appears in color his fur is purple.
 * Manhog:An "unholy hybrid of human ambivalence". Woodring says he sympathizes with Manhog: "He is very much at a disadvantage because of his looks and his weak character. He’d be good if he could, and when given a chance, he is good. But he has no discipline, no grit, no ability to select a better path and stick with it." Earlier, however, Woodring had said he was "completely craven, incapable of a good act." His acts often led to a very nasty, bloody end.
 * Whim: A perpetually smiling, devilish character who inhabits a body with a moon-shaped head, "the spirit of politics". When the body is destroyed, it turns out that Whim is actually a "tiny, malicious worm" that is able to crawl inside others (including Frank) and has the power of transformation. According to Woodring, "[h]e’s a conniver, a user. His body can be smashed, but he always gets a new one. Much in the same way that politicians are more or less interchangeable. They surrender their individuality to be part of that hideous game."
 * The Jerry Chickens:Mischievous chicken-like characters, each a different geometric shape.
 * Pupshaw:A female canine-like "godling" companion whom Frank bought from one of the Jerry Chickens in an early story. Testy in nature, but a faithful protector to Frank.
 * Pushpaw:Pupshaw's somewhat simple-minded but plucky and good-natured mate and male counterpart.
 * Lucky:A man with a grotesquely elongated, pendulous proboscis for a mouth. His feet are wrapped in rags and he wears a nightgown. He is a born drudge taking on the most menial work (the best job was being a delivery man in the story that introduced Pupshaw). In another story, he is amputating his proboscis, a painful task.
 * Frank's Pas:Identical creatures that resemble older, less anthropomorphic versions of Frank. One of them (Frank's "Real Pa") is Frank's father; the other is thus his "Faux Pa". Frank will look like them when he grows old. They are physically identical to one another except for one tiny difference. The Faux Pa enthusiastically embraces his role as a father figure and gives Frank the worst possible advice.

Influence and recognition
While the Frank stories have never been a mainstream success, they have attracted an avid cult following and have been extensively merchandised as t-shirts, action figures and other things. Many alternative cartoonists (Dave Cooper, for example) have cited the Frank stories as an inspiration, and mainstream comic book creators have also expressed their admiration, with Alan Moore including an image of Frank as part of an alternate universe in the pages of his superhero series 1963. Various artists have created short Frank animations based on Woodring's original tales, nine of which were collected on the 2007 DVD release, Visions of Frank: Short Films by Japan's Most Audacious Animators.

Woodring has won multiple Harvey Awards for his Frank stories, including the Best Single Issue or Story award for "Frank in the River" in 1993. In 1999 The Comics Journal ranked the Frank stories #55 in its list of the 100 best comics of the century.

Frank is also referenced on the Channel 4 sitcom The IT Crowd. A color poster of Frank is prominently displayed on the wall behind the desk of main character Roy.

Yo La Tengo bassist James McNew has a tattoo of the characters Pupshaw and Pushpaw on his arm.

title: Frank (comics)


text:
Faygo

Faygo Beverages, Inc., is a soft drink company headquartered in Detroit, Michigan. The beverages produced by the company, branded as Faygo or Faygo Pop, are distributed in the Midwestern, Mid-Atlantic, and Central Southern regions of the United States, as well as southern and western Canada. Faygo Beverages, Inc. is a wholly owned subsidiary of the National Beverage Corporation started in Detroit, Michigan in 1907 as Feigenson Brothers Bottling Works.

History
Faygo was founded in Detroit, Michigan, in November 1907, as Feigenson Brothers Bottle Works by Russian baker immigrants Ben and Perry Feigenson. The original flavors of Faygo (fruit punch, strawberry, and grape) were based on cake frosting recipes used by the Feigensons in Russia. Initially, the brothers used a horse-drawn wagon for deliveries and lived above the bottling plant.

As the business grew over the next 10 years, the Feigensons were able to purchase houses, hire their first employee, and acquire a second wagon and horse for deliveries. More flavors were added to the lineup, including Sassafras Soda and Lithiated Lemon. The brothers' success also allowed them to build a new plant on Detroit's Beaubien Street.

In 1921, as the company expanded, they decided the brand name "Feigenson Brothers" was too long and changed it to Faygo. The brothers bought their first delivery truck in 1922, and started home deliveries the following year. New flavors in the 1920s were a vanilla flavored soft drink, a seltzer water, "Ace Hi" (similar in flavor to Nehi), and Rock and Rye (named after a Prohibition Era drink). The company opened its currently operating bottling plant in 1935 on Gratiot Avenue in Detroit. The company briefly entered into beer production.

The brothers ran the company until the mid-1940s, when they turned it over to their sons. In 1956, the company created a series of radio and television advertisements featuring a fictional cowboy called the Faygo Kid, who was portrayed in animation for television commercials for Faygo Old-Fashioned Root Beer. Jim Henson's Muppets, Inc. produced a small series of ads for Faygo strawberry soda starring the Muppet characters Wilkins and Wontkins (best known as the spokes-characters for the Washington, D.C.-based Wilkins Coffee). Three ads are known to exist.

Because the drink had a limited shelf life, the company sold its products only in Michigan until the late 1950s. Company chemists later resolved this issue by installing a filtration system to remove impurities from the manufacturing plant's water system. In the 1960s, the soda's regional popularity expanded when the company began advertising during broadcasts of Detroit Tigers games. With the Tiger ads reaching beyond the Faygo market area at the time and the inability to cancel the ads, Faygo shipped products to the wholesalers' warehouses. This increased company sales from $6 million in 1966 to $20.4 million in 1971. Advertisements produced in the 1970s featured "everyday people" on a Boblo Boat singing the "Faygo Boat Song".

The company introduced a low-calorie version of their products in the 1960s called Ohana. This sub-line soon became a majority of company sales. In 1961, the Royal Line was launched as a premium product line. The juice extract used to produce the initial run of Royal Hawaiian Pineapple Orange was not sterilized and became rancid, causing a buildup of gases such that, after hitting store shelves, the bottles exploded. The soda was recalled and Dole gave Faygo enough sterilized juice to offset the company's losses. Six other flavors also entered into production in the 1960s. The original strawberry flavor from 1907 was renamed Redpop in the late 1960s.

With Michigan's beverage container deposit law passed in 1978, Faygo thought people would prefer returnable cans instead of glass. With this choice being incorrect, the company had a hard time making the switch back to bottles, cutting into profits for several years.

Assessing the industry and the second generation's pending retirement, the company was put up for sale. TreeSweet Products Corp. bought the company from the Feigenson family in early 1986 for $105 million. TreeSweet in turn sold the company to National Beverage Corp. a year later in 1987. In the 1980s, they introduced flavored carbonated water.

Faygo expanded in 1996 with a non-carbonated drink line, again named Ohana, which included punches, iced tea and lemonade. In 2007, Faygo celebrated its 100th anniversary with a new flavor and contests for label design. Ten thousand entries were received and a fourth-grade Ohio teacher won with Centennial Soda. In March 2014, the company introduced its ginger ale, Faygo Gold, rivaling cross town company Vernors' flagship drink.

Reception

Faygo was ranked the best-tasting American root beer in the September 2009 issue of Bon Appétit, calling it "dry and crisp, with a frothy head, a good bite and a long finish".

In popular culture
The Detroit hip hop group Insane Clown Posse references Faygo in several songs and sprays live audiences with "Faygo showers". The band has expressed interest in collaborating on limited edition product runs with the company, but Faygo has not reciprocated this interest as they desire to "keep a healthy distance" from the group.

title: Faygo