Growing up in a house full of comics, and reading the dawn of the Marvel Age left an impression on Jaime Hernandez, but he was truly captivated by the storytelling and body language of artists like Dan DeCarlo and Harry Lucey on Archie titles and the energy of Owen Fitzgerald's “Dennis the Menace” work.







While some of Hernandez's “Love and Rockets” stories are full of fantastic elements, it is the unfolding life stories of Maggie Chascarrillo, Hopey Glass, Ray Dominguez, Izzy Reubens, Speedy Ortiz and the rest his Locas cast that have enthralled readers and kept the creator motivated for over 30 years.









Alongside his brother Gilbert, Jaime Hernandez recently returned “Love and Rockets” to its original magazine format following almost a decade of annual graphic novel-length installments.





The Swerve Magazine: When you guys started “Love and Rockets,” you had Maggie and Hopey from the beginning. How and when were those characters developed?







Jaime Hernandez: I created Maggie in high school. I just wanted to create a character that I could write any story about. She could be a space rocket mechanic, or she could do anything. As time evolved, she started to change. I started to change. When I got into punk, she got into punk, things like that. I wanted to create her sidekick, her right hand, so I created Hopey. I kind of wanted my own Betty and Veronica.







By the time it was time to do “Love and Rockets” they were punk rockers. I just wanted to do stories about them because I got really into the dialogue of characters to bounce off of each other.







SM: When you were doing those early issues, did you envision that these were always going to be some of your primary characters?







JH: I was hoping that they would last. Maggie and Hopey took off right away, so I was very comfortable with them, and I knew that whatever situation I put them into, it would work because it was a pretty simple, basic idea. It was sort of like a sitcom: whatever situation happened day, they would adapt to it, so it wasn't that big of a risk.







SM: In the Locas stories, not only have the characters aged as the series has continued, but you've also made frequent use of flashbacks to fill in their lives. How much of these characters do you know when you bring them into a story?







JH: Some characters I know very well right away because I have a story written around them. I have their story before I even introduce them. A lot of times, I create characters just as supporting cast, and some of them have taken on a life of their own, and some don't. The ones that have stuck around are the ones that worked for me, like Izzy and Ray and people like that.







SM: What initially led you to have the characters age as the series progressed?







JH: I'm not sure exactly when that came up. I know my brother Gilbert liked the comic strip “Gasoline Alley,” where the characters did age. I kind of liked that idea too. I like the idea of aging characters because it gave them a past and a future and a present. It just makes a character more well-rounded if you give them that. It's like a life, like people you know, so hopefully it makes the reader just feel closer to them.







SM: While that helps with the narrative for the writing standpoint, it is challenging as an artist to have to redesign the cast to reflect the older ages?







JH: Sure. Sometimes it's because when you have a character between 30 and 40, or 30 and 50, you have to start putting weight on their face and on their body. Sometimes you put too many lines, and they look 60. That can be tricky because I am just dealing with lines on paper after all. Sometimes a little bag under the eyes can make them look older than what they are.







Other than that, it's pretty easy because they are aging as I'm aging. I see what my life is like, and I put that in there. I kind of imagine what they'd be doing at this age with their lives, and how their style of dress changes and their position in life because as they get older, they're not as hip.







SM: I've really been enjoying the recent stories you have been doing with Ray. He's always been around, but how has he built over the years to be such an important character?







JH: Ray was created because I wanted a male Maggie. I was putting all of my thoughts mostly into Maggie, and I kind of wanted a male version. I came up with Ray to tell stories that would work better for a male than a female, or for certain situations. He's the other side of my brain. Maggie's one side, he's the other.







SM: In the most recent issues, you have had this big reunion with Maggie and Hopey and their old friends. Why was this the right time to bring all of the old cast back together again?







JH: I just wanted to do it because they hadn't been for a while. I hadn't seen what some of the cast members were up to. Like the reader, I was revisiting everybody, and I thought that a reunion of them together would be kind of cool. My six main girls weren't always in the same room together, it was kind of rare, so I wanted to see that. Even if it's not all six, it's the main core.







I just did it as kind of a present to myself and to the readers. I have to be careful because it could become formula where, “anytime I have trouble, why don't I just pull out someone from the past?” It can get pretty tiring and repetitive, so I try to be very careful about that.







SM: How do you stay engaged with these characters after writing them for over 30 years?







JH: It's a pretty simple process because I have so many characters, if one of them starts to become boring or their story has kind of ended and I have nothing more to say about them, I kind of make them go away for a while until I can figure out what to do with them. A lot of times when characters disappear, it's just because I feel their story, for the meantime, has ended. If I'm bored with one character, I have ten other characters to choose from. That's why it keeps fresh with me.







SM: When you are telling your stories, do you have most of the plot beats mapped out ahead of time, or do things unfold as you go?







JH: Both. Mostly things unfold, but every once in a while I have something that is written tight. That's rare. Since the characters write themselves most of the time, I find it's a journey writing the story because I don't know exactly what's going to turn out. Sometimes I do have an ending, but only an ending, so I discover what's going on in between while I'm doing it. So far that's worked. There have been times where I've gotten stuck because I should have thought it out more, but it just took me a little longer to figure it out.







SM: You had mentioned that punk rock was one of your passions when you were starting out, but why has it been important to make music a recurring, steady part of the Locas stories?







JH: Music was a big part of my life, and it told a lot of great stories. I thought the world of music was a story worth telling. Plus, in most comics, it was told horribly. I kind of said, “Well, I'm going to show you what people into music is really like in real life.” I tried my best to do that. Like I said, it was a big part of my life at the time “Love and Rockets” started and it was just a whole playground to play with that was untouched in many areas. That was something I took advantage of.







SM: Speaking of music, what was it like when you were contacted by Sadie Dupuis about using the name Speedy Ortiz as an homage?







JH: Well, I wasn't contacted. They already were doing the band with the name. I thought it was pretty cool. I was very flattered. It was kind of the opposite of what happened with Love and Rockets took the name. (laughs) There was something very different to me between taking your actual title and using the name of a character. I find that using a character is a tip of the hat. In the history of music, people have borrowed characters from comics strips for the names of bands, and stuff like that, and I was glad that I was part of that.







SM: As a Latino creator using predominantly Mexican-American cast, do you feel pressures from the Latino community for how your portrayals?







JH: There have been one or two situations where I was criticized—not to my face—that I wasn't political enough. That I didn't talk about the social and political issues of being a Latino in Southern California or in the world. But no, it's been mostly positive. I've inspired people because they go, “Oh man, when I found out there was a comic with Latinos, that was so empowering.” I thought, “Cool. And all I had to do was draw them.”







SM: How did you get involved with doing illustrations for “The New Yorker?”







JH: At the time, there was an editor, or maybe a couple editors, who were comic fans, or kind of tied to comics. They probably thought, “Hey, there's a lot of talent in these comics that's untouched, that we can use.” I was contacted by one of the editors, and I said, “Uh, Okay.” It was new to me, a different kind of fame than I was used to, but it worked out, and I did it for a number of years.







SM: Off of that, because you had done some of his individual stories, you worked with Junot Diaz's “This Is How You Lose Her.” How did that special edition that has your illustrations come about?







JH: The people putting together the book realized that I had illustrated something like three of the stories that were going in the book, and they thought, “Hey, why don't we have him illustrate the rest of the book?” Junot's a big fan, and he was totally into it. I was glad to do it because I became a fan of his through doing “The New Yorker” pieces of his. I'm not that big of a reader, so I hadn't heard of him before. When I did that first one, which was an excerpt from the “Oscar Wao” book, I thought, “Hey, this guy's pretty cool. Plus he's a fan of ours, he keeps talking about our stuff in his books.” What an easy match-up.







SM: That is one of the few times you have worked in conjunction with somebody else. Why do stick mostly to handling everything yourself?







JH: I know what I want. Whatever I want to draw, I go to me to write it. (laughs) It could be being a control freak, maybe, that I want to be in control of every artistic decision. There are times where I've been like, “God, I wish I didn't have to write something. I wish somebody would write me a story.” It's not always the right thing because then I turn around and say, “I don't want to draw this. I want to draw what I want to draw.” I'm kind of spoiled. I get to do everything myself, and all the work you see on the page is 100% me, other than the scan. Why fix it if it ain't broke?







SM: What led you and Gilbert to bring back the magazine format of “Love and Rockets” after the annual format of the past several years?







JH: We kind of wanted to do a shorter version. Something with more closure, more often. The annual for the last eight years, it started to wear on me because I was living with a piece of work for a year. That started to not work out to my benefit. I started to get kind of confused. (laughs) Living with it so long, it started to psychologically mess me up. I kind of thought, “Well, I need closure.” I need closure more often in order to survive this because it was going to drag me down.







When we made that decision, I thought, “This is cool, we have a regular comic again.” It just feels really good to have this thing that people can buy in their shop, and there's your 10 minutes or 20 minutes, or reading depending on how fast you want to read it. It takes me back to when I was a kid, a single 32-page was just a joy.







I found doing the annual, I learned a lot about writing. I learned a lot of new tricks, and there was an advantage of having 50 pages to work with because it gave me space, but going back to the thinner version, doing 16 pages, there's still many advantages there.







SM: The recent issues have also featured your Princess Animus stories. What led you back to doing the sci-fi stories again?







JH: That's for pure fun. It's kind of like, “I get to draw whatever I want now.” I don't have to be stuck in continuity. Of course, now that it's being continued, it's starting to have continuity. But there's a certain thing about drawing wacky sci-fi or wacky fantasy that breaks from the rules. I don't have to draw buildings the way buildings look. I don't have to have anything planted in the real world. I get to just draw crazy shit like pulling heads off .







It's kind of a break from the serious Maggie/Hopey world, but I still put as much thought and love into it. It's just a little more free, and I have a lot of fun with it because when I get too bogged down in the Maggie/Hopey world, I need a break, and this is a good balance.





For more on “Love and Rockets,” read our interview with Gilbert Hernandez:



http://theswervemagazine.com/Gilbert_Hernandez_Love_and_Rockets_The_Swerve_Magazine.html









