One of the greatest stories ever told. It's personal for me; I read the Maggie & Hopey stories as individual comics back when they came out, up until about 1992. To see these stories in one place in this gorgeous edition -- and to see what happened to Maggie after I fell away from the narrative -- was one of the most powerful reading experiences of my life. YMMV. ( )

Storytelling perfection. One of my favorite books ever. ( )

Per Publishers' Weekly: One of the greatest comics ever put to paper and an essential piece of the literature of the punk movement?" You bet. ( )

Slightly more inconsistent than his brother's 80s-alt-comics magnum opus--it took him time to find his voice--but far more dear to me. This is the one I'll pull out at midnight and read till dawn, the one that has me missing a youth I _wish_ I could have lived, despite how clearly he paints its downsides. These multiethnic sexually various growing-up punks and their friends and their Archie-gone-wrong relationships are more real to me than some of my actual friends, and every time I read the later portions I see all the compromises of age bearing down on me. Hopey Glass and Maggie Chascarillo are best friends at first sight, sometime lovers and often furious with each other or not speaking at all (for hundreds of pages at a time), and yet it's clear that on some level, however much they grow apart they've made too much of an impact on each other's lives not to need each other. Hopey (anglicized version of Esperanza) is the cool-beyond-words punk looking to storm the music world--and then the art world--but somehow finds herself whirling away on an endless tour to nowhere. Maggie is a storm of anger and unrequited emotions and eating habits but has never put on a facade in her whole life, and it's impossible not to fall for her gigantic--if wounded--heart, even as the missed opportunities keep racking up.His drawing style is effortless, everyone is overflowing with personality, and nobody writes a cooler universe--nor do many tear one down with such pathos. ( )

Brilliant