The Art of Jaime Hernandez: The Secrets of Life and Death
Gilbert and Jaime Hernandez's Love and Rockets has been praised for its appealing characters, skilled storytelling, and gorgeously sleek artwork. This coffee-table tribute to Jaime showcases his illustration skills, in particular, tracing his art from early fanzine work and other juvenilia, through his first, early–1980s Locas stories depicting punk-rock chicas Maggie and Hopey, which made up in verve what they lacked in polish, to his recent work, in which his now-older heroines have gained a hard-won poignancy that his graceful visuals accentuate. Most of the selected artwork is individual pages and panels, though the inclusion of two complete stories permits full appreciation of Jaime's considerable abilities. In the incisive text, Hignite skillfully explicates Jaime's mastery of a complete arsenal of narrative devices and provides fascinating biographical details of the artist's childhood and adolescence in predominantly Hispanic Oxnard, California, which would become the Hoppers locale of the early Locas stories. The handsomely designed volume combines intelligence and eye appeal, much as do its subject's acclaimed comics. --Gordon Flagg