Jaime Hernandez

Jaime Hernandez
Jaime Hernandez at Heroes Con 2006. Gilbert Hernandez is visible on the left side of the photo.
Born	1959 Oxnard, California
Area(s)	Penciller, Inker, Writer
Pseudonym(s)	Xaime Hernandez
Notable works	Love and Rockets

Jaime (sometimes spelled Xaime) Hernandez (born 1959) is the co-creator of the independent comic book Love and Rockets (along with his brothers Gilbert and Mario).

Early life

Jaime Hernandez grew up in Oxnard, California. He is the youngest of his family, with four older brothers and one sister. His family embraced comics: their mother read them frequently and old issues were kept in large quantities in the house, to be read and re-read by all over the years. "We grew up with comics," Hernandez says. "I wanted to draw comics my whole life."

The brothers read all types of comics and enjoyed those that gave a fairly realistic depiction of family life as well as the standard superhero adventures. Hernandez was particularly influenced by Hank Ketcham's Dennis the Menace and Dan DeCarlo's Archie' comics. The children in his otherwise rather realistic stories are often drawn to resemble Ketcham's, and Jaime's character's often strike very DeCarlo-esque poses. The work of Alex Toth, Charles Schulz, Jesse Marsh and Jack Kirby were also hugely influential.

Hernandez has a lifelong fascination with pro wrestling, especially women's wrestling, and it has been a regular part of his work. Hernandez has also been a lifelong punk rock fan. In addition to playing in bands himself it has been a constant element of his work. Maggie and her friends are almost all punk fans, and Jaime has done a series of stories about Hopey's career as bass player for a luckless punk band.

Career

Love and Rockets #31 by Gilbert and Jaime Hernandez, 1989, Fantagraphics Books.
Cover illustration by Jamie Hernandez depicting his two main characters, Maggie (right) and Hopey.

Jaime's main contribution to Love and Rockets is the ongoing serial narrative Locas which follows the tangled lives of a group of primarily Latina characters, from their teenage years in the early days of the California punk scene to the present day. The two central characters of Jaime's cast are Margarita Luisa "Maggie" Chascarrillo and Esperanza Leticia "Hopey" Glass, whose on-again, off-again, open romance is a focus for many Locas storylines. Early on, the stories switched back and forth between Maggie's sci-fi adventures journeying around the world and working as a "prosolar" mechanic repairing rocketships, and much more realistic stories of Maggie and her friends in a grungy, mostly Latin California neighborhood known as "Hoppers". Eventually Hernandez dropped almost all of the sci-fi elements, although he does still occasionally include references to the earlier stories and he still does very occasional short stories about superheroines, robots and other sci-fi genre elements.

The Hernandez brothers announced they were ending Love and Rockets with issue 50, and that they would be doing solo books from then on. For the next few years, both brothers released many solo books, with Jaime doing several books featuring his Locas characters (including Whoa Nellie, Penny Century, and Maggie and Hopey Color Fun) and Maggie generally occupying a supporting role. Eventually they resumed doing Love and Rockets and Maggie again took center stage, but instead of the large, magazine-style format of the original issues, the book is now released in a more traditional comic book format.

The entire Locas storyline to date was collected into one 700 page graphic novel in 2004.

Hernandez has been praised for the physical beauty of his female characters as well as their complex personalities, and for years he struggled to create comparably nuanced male characters. He succeeded with the introduction of Ray Dominguez, a failed artist who was briefly Maggie's boyfriend and went on to star in many of his own stories. Hernandez has often said that Maggie and Ray both represent different aspects of his own personality.

In an interview with The Comics Journal, Hernandez admitted he'd had difficulty aging his characters, because while he'd known girls like Maggie and Hopey when he was young, he'd never known them long enough to find out what they did in adulthood. For many years time passed very slowly in Locas, but it did pass: Maggie debuted as a slight yet curvy young adult mechanic, and as Jaime developed her character she started to gain weight slowly over each comic issue because of depression and other factors. This was controversial with some fans, but Hernandez was adamant that he'd made the right decision. As he told The Comics Journal, "(Maggie) was born to be fat." Each issue made her less of a character made from lines on paper to a human being with complex layers. A few years ago Hernandez jumped the characters years ahead, aging most of them visibly and shaking up their previously established relationships. The present Maggie is now the 40-ish manager of an apartment complex with bleached blonde hair and a penchant for wearing sexy bathing suits despite her rubenesque figure. While she still strongly resembles the zaftig Maggie readers have grown used to, from some angles she now sports a double chin or bags beneath her eyes. Her relationship with Hopey is now somewhat strained, as she feels some tension over their endlessly non-committed state, and she is also somewhat frustrated with her career (or lack of one). Hopey, meanwhile, has been working with children, something unimaginable for the violent, sarcastic punk we first met.

Other work

In addition to his Locas stories, Henandez has also done occasional work for DC Comics and The New Yorker, and he has done many album covers for such artists as Michelle Shocked. Earlier in his career Hernandez also did album covers for some "Nardcore" punk bands, such as Ill Repute and Dr. Know, the latter of whom featured his younger brother Ismael on bass. In September 2006, Hernandez also created the artwork for the critically acclaimed Los Lobos album The Town and the City. In the '80s Gilbert, Mario and Jaime collaborated on Mister X, a sci-fi comic book series from Vortex Press, with Jaime handling the art and Gilbert and Mario plotting. The book's noirish look has been cited as an influence by the creators of Batman: The Animated Series among other retro-futuristic works.^{[citation needed]} The Hernandez brothers themselves hold little affection for it, however, with Gilbert once describing it being "like a bad zit... it just sort of happened." After the Hernandez brothers left the book on bad terms with the publisher, various other artists continued it, including Seth.

In 2006, Publishers Weekly ranked Hernandez' work Ghost of Hoppers second on its critics' poll of the best comic books of 2006.

Critical reaction

Jaime's Love and Rockets stories have been widely praised by both comic and literary critics, and many comics creators have cited him as one of the greats. As Alan Moore has put it,

“

Jaime's art balances big white and black spaces to create a world of nuance in between, just as his writing balances our big human feelings and our small human trivias to generate its incredible emotional power. Quite simply, this is one of the twentieth century's most significant comic creators at the peak of his form, with every line a wedding of classicism and cool.[citation needed]

”

An early-80s review in Publishers Weekly stated:

“

[Jaime's] stories never fail to entertain, but their claim on literature is due to Hernandez's bracing realism. His virtuoso drawings present characters of intelligence, wit, and human frailty who confront each other – and the reader – with such honesty and genuine tenderness that one may find it hard to believe she/he is reading a comic book.[citation needed]

”

Awards

• 1986 Kirby Award – Best Black & White Series (Love & Rockets)
• 1986 Inkpot Award
• 1989 Harvey Award – Best Continuing or Limited Series (Love & Rockets)
• 1990 Harvey Award – Best Continuing or Limited Series (Love & Rockets)
• 1992 Harvey Award – Best Inker (Love & Rockets)
• 1998 Harvey Award – Best New Series (Penny Century)
• 1999 Harvey Award – Best Single Issue (Penny Century #3: "Home School")
• 2000 Harvey Award – Best Inker (Penny Century)
• 2001 Harvey Award – Best Artist or Penciler (Penny Century)
• 2003 Harvey Award – Best Inker (Love & Rockets)
• 2004 Harvey Award – Best Single Issue or Story (Love & Rockets #9)
• 2006 Harvey Award – Best Single Issue (Love and Rockets, vol. 2, #15)
• 2007 Harvey Award – Best Cartoonist (Writer/Artist) (Love & Rockets)

References

Sources

• Aldama, Frederick Luis (2006). Spilling the Beans in Chicanolandia: Conversations with Writers and Artists. Austin: University of Texas Press. ISBN 978-0-292-71312-3. Retrieved 6 September 2011. 

Further reading

• Aldama, Frederick Luis (2006). "Jaime Hernandez (of Los Bros Hernandez)". Spilling the Beans in Chicanolandia: Conversations with Writers and Artists. University of Texas Press. pp. 119–128. ISBN 978-0-292-71312-3. Retrieved 2012-09-21. 
• Aldama, Frederick Luis (2009-06-01). "Jaime Hernandez of Los Bros Hernandez". Your Brain on Latino Comics: From Gus Arriola to Los Bros Hernandez. University of Texas Press. pp. 182–201. ISBN 978-0-292-71973-6. Retrieved 2012-09-21. 

Gaiman, Neil (July 1995). "The Hernandez Brothers". The Comics Journal (Fantagraphics Books) (178): 91–123. 

• Hignite, Todd (2006). "Jaime Hernandez's Locas". Strips, Toons, and Bluesies: Essays in Comics and Culture. Princeton Architectural Press. pp. 46–59. ISBN 978-1-56898-621-0. Retrieved 2012-09-21. 
• Hignite, Todd (2007). "Jaime Hernandez". In the Studio: Visits with Contemporary Cartoonists. Yale University Press. pp. 132–163. ISBN 978-0-300-13387-5. Retrieved 2012-09-21. 
• "artbomb.net". artbomb.net creator profile:Jaime Hernandez. Retrieved 2005-06-06. 

External links

• Jaime Hernandez at Fantagraphics
• Review of Jaime's solo work at The Comics Interpreter
• Review of Love & Rockets
• Long list of Love and Rockets links
• Character index for Jaime's Hoppers/Locas stories - About 187 characters appear at least once in Jaime's work; 65 of these appear more than once.
• Jaime Hernandez interview
• Jaime Hernandez interview with Suicide Girl