Book excerpt: Five women stand in a police lineup; four of them are garishly dressed, impressively endowed superwomen ― perfectly normal, because this is, after all, the cover of a comic book. A closer look, however, reveals a fifth woman who seems thoroughly out of place ― mousy, in bathrobe and curlers, smoking a cigarette, she appears to have been suddenly yanked from her breakfast table. Surely, this diminutive, dowdy woman is here by mistake ― or is she? From the very first cover of the very first issue of Love and Rockets in 1982, Gilbert and Jaime Hernandez have created artwork that has subverted, contradicted and celebrated the history of the comic book medium, inverting familiar tropes and creating some of the most iconic images in comics over the past three and a half decades, inviting fans and readers into their world. Amazingly, many of the covers created by Gilbert and Jaime Hernandez for the various iterations of Love and Rockets over the past 35 years have never been collected or have only been reprinted in black-and-white. Love and Rockets: The Covers will not only rectify this problem, but present them without trade dress (logos, marketing hype, etc.), allowing the original cover illustrations to communicate on their own.