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Tuesday, Nov 10, 2009
"Locas" is as much a treatise on Southern California's seemingly insurmountable race, gender and class divide as it is a journey of self-discovery for two women looking for Mr. -- or Ms. -- Goodbar. Jaime's early entries in the saga feature an epistolary relationship between the two heroines, amid adventures with space travel and dinosaurs, but Maggie and Hopey soon ditch their more fantastical sci-fi exploits for the real life of SoCal's burgeoning punk scene. Channeling the music's anti-authoritarian energy, the duo find a vehicle for their various frustrations and desires, eventually forming an inseparable bond that sustains them until the end of "Locas," as they are carted off together in the back of a police car.
Like Gabriel García Márquez, to whom they're frequently compared, the Hernandez brothers find the immanent transcendent in the drudgery of everyday life. "Love & Rockets" is sort of the "One Hundred Years of Solitude" of bisexual punk-gal comic books. Whatever the academics and comics cheerleaders eventually decide their place in literary history may be, Jaime Hernandez and his brothers have poured their hearts and heads into the personal tragicomedies of "Love & Rockets" since 1981. Fantagraphics published the 50th and last issue of "L&R" Vol. 1 eight years ago, and Los Bros. are now 12 issues into Vol. 2, with no signs of slowing down. Jaime Hernandez spoke to me from his Los Angeles home.
Why did you decide to pull the stories in "Locas" out and create a separate volume?
Fantagraphics did my brother's book last year, so I guess it was my turn! I had a body of work that would be fun to see all in one place, so you didn't have to jump from volume to volume trying to figure out what's going on. You get the straight story all the way through. I was kind of sad about this book, however. I couldn't put everything in it. I had to leave out stories of other characters that I thought were good material. But the book just would have been too fat.
What do you think the stories of Maggie and Hopey bring to the "Love & Rockets" universe?
Well, when I was a teenager, I was still doing superhero comics for myself, trying to create a universe of characters. I noticed that I really got into character interaction, people just talking and bouncing off each other, getting hot and cold -- and I wanted to create two characters like Maggie and Hopey that I could do that with forever, who could talk about anything. As their characters progressed, my whole universe revolved around them. Because that's what interested me most in storytelling: characterization.
What was the force driving you to pour yourself into these two characters?
I don't know. When I first started doing it, I didn't really think about it. I just thought, they're two friends. They have fights, they get along, they back each other up. I just wanted my own Charlie Brown, my Betty and Veronica, my Batman. My own characters that would one day stand right next to Charlie Brown and Lucy, that kind of thing. But, you know, I wasn't holding my breath. I was thinking, Well, it'll be fun trying.
How does it feel now, 20 years down the road?
I'm pleased. I'm also happy that I was young enough to find what I wanted right away, instead of having to struggle and finally get it when I'm 35. I'm also glad that it took off as early as it did, so I could have time to build on it.
One of the things I love about "Love & Rockets" is that it's about families, not simply meaning blood relations but your "family," regardless of whether they're related to you or not. Which is only accentuated by the fact that you worked with your brothers.
Family has always played a big role in "Love & Rockets." I hung out with my brothers and my sister as much as I hung out with my friends. And in Mexican or Latino culture, family is a big deal, which is why we have gangs, who are basically families of a sort protecting each other while killing the other families in town. So it's something that's natural to me.
Do members of your family, or other people you know, see themselves in "Love & Rockets"?
Yeah. When we self-published our first issue and were showing it to friends, I can't remember how many people told me, "Maggie, that's me. I'm Maggie." OK, whatever. (Laughs.)
Did you take story lines from your family and friends?
Yeah, but I changed the names to protect the innocent! But yeah, that happened. Or I would be getting drunk one day with my friends and they'd tell me an amazing true story that happened about a guy they knew at work or somewhere who did this or that. I would steal some of that. When you realize that real life is more fun than art, that's when you've got to stop and say, "Hey, wait a minute."
Did you have any problems writing your narrative from a female perspective? I mean, you're a guy.
I just went for it. It just seemed cool at the time. I guess it goes back to when I was a teenager, drawing my superheroes. It wasn't long before I wanted to create female heroes, before I wanted to draw a girl in tights. (Laughs).
