Jaime Hernandez has been a leading figure in the world of comic books for more than 40 years. With his two older brothers, Hernandez created the renowned series "Love and Rockets."
He’ll be in East Lansing in early October for several events. That includes a public talk at Michigan State University, home of the world’s largest publicly accessible comic book collection.
Hernandez grew up the fourth of six children in an Oxnard, California home near Los Angeles in the early 1960s.
He says comic books were everywhere in his childhood. His family read everything from Marvel and DC superhero stories, to "Archie" and "Dennis the Menace," and even horror comic books.
He credits his older brothers Gilbert and Mario for fostering his love of comics.
“I didn’t always read them, looked at the pictures a lot," he joked.
By the late 1970s, Hernandez and his brothers had started to think comic books could become more than the standard fare. So, they started trying to make their own.
"It was a cool time, but we were kind of frustrated with how comics were going, and like, ‘God, I want to do comics, to show them how it’s done’ and stuff like that. And, punk just happened to come along at that time," he explained.
The emergence of punk music out of London and New York had a huge impact on the brothers’ devotion to comics. Hernandez says he felt freed from the old “what I want to do vs. what they’re telling me to do” mentality.
He got into punk fashion and started to attend concerts by as-yet unsigned LA bands like Black Flag and X.
For him, the arrival of a punk scene in LA became a way to unite the music’s ferocity with monster movies and comics.
The hand-drawn flyers at LA punk clubs started to influence his own artwork, and Hernandez started to create flyers of his own for the local bands in their hometown.
Still, comic books remained in his family's blood. They created the first issue of "Love and Rockets" themselves, with stories about a sci-fi mechanic, but they had no idea how to sell it.
Self-published in 1981, Gilbert sent a copy to Gary Groth, publisher of The Comics Journal, who liked what he saw. Things started to take off from there.
Fantagraphics Books published "Love and Rockets" for wider distribution the next year, this time with a color cover, and since then they’ve put out four volumes with dozens of issues.
“The funny thing is from 1982, I’ve been doing it the same since, you know? My approach, everything is still the same way I did it back when I was 22 or 23 years old.”
The music connection came full circle when an English rock band took the name Love and Rockets in 1985.
Jaime and Gilbert Hernandez are still creating "Love and Rockets" comics. Both do their own writing and drawing, and otherwise, they do not collaborate. Their separate creations and stories appear in the same books.
“I didn’t know that was weird until someone said ‘you do it like that? Not one writes and one draws”? …and we go 'No, no, we never touch each other’s stuff.'”
Jaime Hernandez will be at MSU for several days with students and faculty.
English professor Julian Chambliss will lead a public talk with the artist at 7 p.m. on October 2 in Wells Hall.
