Locas: The Maggie and Hopey Stories  by Jaime Hernandez. Fantagraphics, 720 pages. March 2026. I’ve come to understand that when a self-described nerd says that they like to read, if they’re not talking about Barnes and Noble-branded box sets of A Court of Thorns and Roses or Tolkien, they’re probably talking about lore. By lore I mean continuity: elaborate (fictional) biographies and histories cobbled together from offhand dialogue and descriptive set dressing—storytelling boiled down to data points, compiled by fans, cataloged on wikis, and argued about on forums. On days when I’m feeling generous, I find this oddly beautiful. The former graduate student in me could probably even muster some words about hypertextuality and collaborative authorship . Other days (most days) it just pisses me off. This growing impulse to treat lore as in-and-of-itself important strikes me as the natural end point of our era’s dwindling literacy.…