Hernandez Brothers: The Mr. Skin Interview

Your mother is a great comic-book collector. How did her love of the medium nourish your talents?

Jaime Hernandez: She encouraged us to read comics, instead of discouraged us like most moms, so we didn't know comics were a geek medium, which is why we don't have a secret self-loathing for what we do.

Gilbert Hernandez: The first comic book Mom saw was a Captain Marvel comic in the '40s, and she was immediately fascinated by the way the artwork told the story. This began her obsession with comics, but her mother disapproved and threw them out when she could find them.

When my brothers and sister were growing up Mom let us read comic books as retribution, I guess. She'd tell us about the comics she read like Captain Marvel and The Spirit, which happened to be the best comics of the day. At the time we didn't know how to get to see any golden-age comics, so they were a mysterious buried treasure to us.

Mom copied panels from her favorite comics, drawing the images as portraits. This inspired us to get better at drawing our own comics. Jaime and I never stopped drawing comics since.

What's the genesis of Love & Rockets?

GH: Older brother Mario had a friend who worked at a print shop and was able to get negatives made of a thirty-two-page comic Jaime and I did up for the occasion. We borrowed $700 from our little brother and got the first issue of Love & Rockets printed. Not having any money to promote the thing, we sent a copy to Fantagraphics, hoping they would review it in the Comics Journal. Knowing they were the meanest bastards in comics, we figured if we could take their abuse we could take anything. Turns out they were nice guys and offered to publish L&R.

Why did you stop production with the fiftieth issue?

JH: We were simply burned out by doing this for fifteen years straight. But it's funny, now that we started up again I don't feel burned out in the least.

GH: There started to become a sameness to it, and we didn't want to burn out. We wanted a break to do our own solo comics.

What motivated you to bring it back several years later, and how has it changed?

JH: When we started doing separate titles very few readers followed, so we realized that it was the title that brought a lot of readers in, so it wasn't a hard decision to make. The only thing different with the new title is that it is comic size instead of magazine size.

GH: It was difficult for our old readers to find our new work for some reason. It's simply easier to find our work under Love & Rockets.

How autobiographical are those early stories, especially yours, Jaime, which any kid who grew up in an '80s punk-rock scene can relate to?

JH: It's kind of hard to say because most of my punk characters are younger than me. I was into the whole thing a little earlier than they were, and the L.A. scene, I suppose like most punk scenes, moved very fast fashion-wise, soundstyle-wise, etc. When we put out the first issue in '81, I felt a little weird drawing fashion that was two years old.

Was being part of the L.A. punk scene crucial to your development as artists?

JH: Sure, it gave us the courage to succeed on our terms. It made us very confident. We knew what we had to say was worth putting out there even though we had no idea who would support it. It also gave us something to draw.

GH: The punk scene for me was inspirational, as I learned you could be creative without caring about what others thought. It was in my experience before punk that you had to get the approval from some phantom "higher ups" to be accepted as a creative force: crap-hole magazines like Rolling Stone for music, snotty crap-hole talentless art teachers in school, and crap-hole fan-boy morons in comics. Punk said "screw that, do it yourself!" DIY!

Both your works can get sexually explicit and feature voluptuous women. How important is sex to your stories?

JH: As important as stupor heroes are in those other comics! It's a big part of my life, like eating breakfast or dinner. If I'm not allowed to draw it, I won't draw, period.

GH: Important as in making the characters more interesting to us. Hmmm, let's see: muscle-bound moron in spandex tights or intelligent and attractive woman as the protagonist?

Have your comics been targeted by censors, any horror stories there?

JH: Nobody going to jail or anything. Gilbert drew a swinging penis on a nude dancer and somebody flipped out even though they never flipped out over all those naked ladies that were around from day one.

GH: A couple of comic shops got in trouble, but we've never had a direct problem with it.

From your mother to your strong female characters, women have the spotlight in your comics. Do you both go for strong, curvy women?

JH: Sure, why not? Skinny ones too. Dark ones, light ones, cross-eyed ones.

Are Maggie, Hopey, Luba, etc., inspired by real women?

JH: Naw, mine are a mixture of every woman I've ever seen since I was born. Wait a minute, I guess that's a yes answer.

GH: Luba, Pipo, Chelo, etc., are cobbled from several different women. None of our characters are based on any one person.

Do you think your characters would be Suicide Girls or something like that if they were growing up today, or would they find that self-empowerment through cartoon sexuality ridiculous?

JH: I don't know. I grew up when punk girls had a somewhat different reason for being what they were, so it's very difficult to imagine.

How about as Latinos, are you bothered by the sexual stereotypes of, say, a Jennifer Lopez, or are you happy to see these images creeping into the mainstream?

JH: As long as it is on JLo's terms and not whitey's, it is A-OK by me.

GH: Jennifer Lopez (Picture: 1) isn't any more a sexual stereotype then Halle Berry (Picture: 1) or Heidi Klum. (Picture: 1) Latinos creeping into the mainstream? How dare they?!

Speaking of sexy ladies, do you guys remember the first sex scene you saw in a mainstream movie growing up?

JH: God no, but I'll bet I was forced to cover my eyes.

GH: The first actual "sex" scene I saw was pretty heavy. It was the rape scene in Ingmar Bergman's The Virgin Spring, both horrifying and fascinating at the same time for a nine-year-old boy to see. It wasn't sex, but you could be exposed to such violence against women, but not loving sex. This was on regular TV.

What are your favorite sex scenes in movies?

JH: When you don't expect a certain actor to have much till she takes it off and you go "Ai yai yai, where the fuck did that come from?"

GH: The most erotic scene in a movie for me is at the end of Alfred Hitchcock's Notorious where Cary Grant has to sneak a poisoned Ingrid Bergman out of a house of Nazis. As he carries her, the close-ups of these two glamorous movie stars whispering their intense love for each other is still amazing.

How about actresses, do you go for the types like you draw? Who are some of your favorite sex sirens?

JH: Mostly dead ones. I do remember having a small crush on Shannon Whirry (Picture: 1) in the early '90s. But mostly it's not the sex goddesses that really grab me; it's the ones that sneak up on you.

GH: Some of the Palomar women are partially inspired by classic movie stars like Marilyn Monroe, (Picture: 1) Sophia Loren, (Picture: 1) and Raquel Welch, (Picture: 1) etc. No waifs here, pedophiles.

Are there any plans to make a Love & Rockets movie?

JH: Har de har har.

GH: Plans to make a Palomar movie are moving ahead. But it's still in the script re-write stage. Previous attempts have failed because producers didn't know how to cast it or even market it.

Who would you want to play your main characters?

JH: Real Mexicans. Even for the few white characters.

GH: I'd prefer unknowns, but you need big names attached to get things going. There are plenty of Latino actors around now to make it happen.

Thanks, you've been good sports. Before I let you go, care to share with our audience what you're currently working on?

JH: L&R, L&R, L&R.

GH: I'll have an original graphic novel coming out from DC/Vertigo called Sloth at the end of summer. It's about alienated youth and urban legends. New Tales of Old Palomar will come out then as well in magazine form. It takes off from where the first Palomar story ended, telling new stories with the original youthful cast. Last but not least, my wife and I starred in and directed a DVD of a mock sci-fi TV show called The Naked Cosmos, available on Amazon.com. It's about a cosmic motivational speaker and the nutty characters who populate his strange world. All that and some old thing called Love & Rockets!