Julio's Day

It begins in the year 1900, with the scream of a newborn. It ends, 100 pages later, in the year 2000, with the death-rattle of a 100-year-old man. The infant and the old man are both Julio, and Gilbert Hernandez's Julio's Day (originally serialized in Love and Rockets Vol. II but never completed until now) is his latest graphic novel, a masterpiece of elliptical, emotional storytelling that traces one life -- indeed, one century in a human life -- through a series of carefully crafted, consistently surprising and enthralling vignettes. There is hope and joy, there is bullying and grief, there is war (so much war -- this is after all the 20th century), there is love, there is heartbreak. This is very much a singular, standalone story that will help cement Hernandez's position as one of the strongest and most original cartoonists of this, or any other, century. Introduction by novelist Brian Evenson. "A haunting performance and about as perfect a literary work as I've read in years. Hernandez accomplishes in 100 pages what most novelists only dream of -- rendering the closeted, phlegmatic Julio in all his confounding complexity and in the process creating an unflinching biography of a community, a country and a century. A masterpiece." -- Junot Díaz