Gilbert and Jaime Hernandez on 40 years of 'Love and Rockets' comics

Bullseye with Jesse Thorn

NPR

Society & Culture

4.7 • 2.7K Ratings

🗓️ 27 January 2023

⏱️ 39 minutes

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Summary

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 broad, 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. 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.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Bullseye with Jesse Thorn is a production of MaximumFun.org and is distributed by NPR.
0:21.4	It's Bullseye, I'm Jesse Thorn.
0:23.4	The first issue of Love and Rockets came out in 1982.
0:27.4	Its creators, Gilbert, Jaime and Mario Hernandez published it themselves.
0:33.0	But it wasn't a homemade operation for long.
0:35.5	They almost immediately got a publisher, started racking up awards, and earned themselves
0:40.8	a broad, passionate fan base.
0:43.7	Mario eventually took a step back to raise a family, but Gilbert and Jaime have been
0:48.5	going strong for over four decades.
0:52.7	If you've never read it, Love and Rockets isn't just about one thing.
0:56.3	It's a collection of stories.
0:58.2	Saga's, really.
0:59.9	A lot of Gilbert stories take place in the fictional town of Palomar, in Latin America.
1:04.8	A lot of Jaime's take place in the United States, centering around the personal lives of
1:09.3	two Chicana women, Maggie and Hopi.
1:13.4	Inside the pages of Love and Rockets, there are themes of humanism.
1:17.5	Stories lifted from the Hernandez Brothers' life, growing up brown and punk, in the Southern
1:21.6	California farm town of Oxnard.
1:24.4	At other times, the series goes on flights of magical, realist fancy.
1:29.0	There are a lot of things that make Love and Rockets important and groundbreaking.
1:32.6	It's a hit comic series that isn't about superheroes or even action.
1:37.6	The Hernandez Brothers draw mostly people of color and a lot of women.
	...

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