Gilbert and Jaime Hernandez on 40 years of ‘Love and Rockets’ comics

Episode notes

(Photo: Fantagraphics Books via Wikimedia Commons )

The first issue of Love And Rockets came out in 1982. It was co-created by brothers Gilbert, Jaime and Mario Hernandez. 

They started off by self-publishing their work, but it wasn’t long before they got a publisher, started racking up awards and earned a passionate fan base. 

Mario eventually took a step back to raise a family, but Gilbert and Jaime have been going strong with the series for over four decades now.

To celebrate 40 years of Love and Rockets, their publisher Fantagraphics recently released a box set of their classic work: Love and Rockets: The First Fifty.

Love and Rockets is a collection of stories. Several of Gilbert’s stories take place in the fictional town of Palomar, in Latin America. Jaime’s stories usually take place in the US, centering around the personal lives of two Chicana women: Maggie and Hopey. 

Inside the pages of Love and Rockets, there’s themes of humanism: stories lifted from the Hernandez Brothers’ life growing up brown and punk in the Southern California farm town of Oxnard. At other times, the series goes on flights of magical realist fantasy.

Interviewing Gilbert and Jaime is correspondent Brian Heater. The Hernandez brothers get into how it all started and the recent box set collection. Plus, what it’s like to live with these characters for decades, and whether they’ve thought about how the stories might end. 

If you enjoyed Brian Heater’s conversation with the Hernandez brothers check out his podcast Recommended If You Like. On that show, he talks with musicians, cartoonists, and other creative types. You can find his interview with Mario Hernandez here.