If Betty and Veronica were Latina punk lesbians

Jaime Hernandez talks about his massive new comics collection "Locas," the 20-year odyssey of two L.A. rock 'n' roll chicks looking for love (and rockets).

By Scott Thill

Dec 16, 2004 | Write what you know, the literary maxim goes. In the early 1980s, three talented brothers named Jaime, Gilbert and Mario Hernandez ditched the superhero game, took a look around at the Southern California barrios they called home and did just that. That's how the alt-comics phenomenon known as "Love & Rockets" came into being.

But that's far from the end of the story, one that stretches across decades and is still unraveling, like the great domestic mysteries that have sustained literary culture for millennia. Shakespeare already knew what Los Bros. Hernandez figured out two decades ago, when they threaded their deeply personal tales of racial tension, alternative sexuality, punk rock, familial drama, sci-fi and much more into the dense, magical-realist master narrative known as "Love & Rockets." After all, the Bard never wrote a play without a family firmly embedded in its middle. He well knew that there are few grander, more compelling narratives than those born out of friendship and kinship. The ties that bind us normal humans -- those who can't change into a cape and tights at the first sign of trouble -- are those we sometimes tighten or tear to pieces on the way to discovering who we are. And who we are is often all that we have.

Those who've been paying attention to the legitimization of comics over the last 20 years understand the importance of the pioneering hybrid of comics and fiction in "Love & Rockets," which began before marketers had invented the category of "graphic novel." If the 19th century belonged to the novel, the 20th century might have belonged to the comic book, a hypothesis supported by the billions raked in from various cinematic adaptations of canonical comics franchises like "Batman," "Superman," "Spider-Man" and "The Hulk," along with more esoteric offerings like Daniel Clowes' "Ghost World" and Harvey Pekar's "American Splendor."

Art Spiegelman and Alan Moore are more famous than the Hernandez brothers, and have enjoyed a level of crossover success "Love & Rockets" will never see. But both those artists would be happy to acknowledge Los Bros.' importance; it was Moore who introduced "Love & Rockets" to some ex-members of '80s goth-rock outfit Bauhaus, who ripped off the name for their new band. That's still a sensitive subject for Jaime, Gilbert and Mario -- but then again, they're still here, writing and drawing new work, while the Love & Rockets CD catalog is chilling somewhere in the dustbin of music history.

Comics publisher Fantagraphics has compiled the various "L&R" series created over the last two decades, separated them by author, and released them in gorgeous hardback editions. In 2003, Gilbert claimed the spotlight when Fantagraphics released "Palomar" -- a collection of his stories centering on the eponymous Central American town and the interconnected lives of its inhabitants. The newest edition is Jaime Hernandez's sprawling "Locas," a 700-plus-page tome (the biggest Fanta has ever published) about two friends-cum-lovers named Maggie Chascarillo and Hopey Glass, rebellious gals who strive to define themselves against the socioeconomic and sexual pressures of the fictional Hoppers 13 barrio and end up in love. (Thanks to our pals at Fantagraphics, here's a sample page from "Locas.")

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