Review by Ian Keogh

One of Gilbert Hernandez’s go to characters over the years has been lisping psychiatrist Fritz, whose sideline is appearing in schlock exploitation movies. Hernandez has released several film ‘adaptations’ as graphic novels over the years (see recommendations), and three more are collected as Proof That the Devil Loves You, expanded from their original serialised versions.

The first installs her in a dreamlike version of Palomar, the Central American community so adroitly realised as Hernandez began his career. Loading the meta references, Fritz’s role is a simpler, satirical version of her sister Luba, Palomar’s matriarchal authority, and other characters from both the Palomar stories and Fritz’s own life appear in what’s an extended surreal dream. There’s a playful exploration of words with different meanings and a twisting of events from the earlier stories, but unless you enjoy narratives where anything can happen without any great motivation or reason, the title story rapidly outlives its welcome.

Perhaps Fritz did voiceovers for the second strip, which follows a mismatched trio as they hit a casino town after a successful heist. It’s a celebration, but their ambitions are minimal, and matters take a turn for the worse. This is also in mystifyingly inexplicable circumstances.

Fritz begins the longest story on a space mission, before Hernandez dives deep into Russ Meyer homage as she interacts with other women who have massively oversized breasts. It references earlier works adapting Fritz’s films before becoming a play with three vastly different acts. A violent fantasy sequence connects the first scene with the finale of Fritz reflecting on her life and its limitations. Originally three separate stories, stitching them together, however vague the connections, provides a fuller experience for the sudden switches of mood. It’s bonkers, but more satisfying than the remaining content.

However, it underlines that unless you’re a major fan of this type of exploration of surreality and absurdism, as supplied in small doses between other stories in the Love & Rockets numbered paperbacks, it’s an exotic diversion. Sometimes silly, sometimes more thoughtful, as part of the greater mix it adds to the varied tone. Collected in a single volume, though, it’s too much and too long.