Jaime Hernandez, Love and Rockets issue 3 page 21 (Fantagraphics 1982)

A few years ago, a long time dealer/collector told me that he considered Love and Rockets by the Hernandez brothers one of the great achievements of American long form fiction, full-stop. His comment made me think - I was a 20th Century American Literature major in college while L&R was hitting its stride in the mid to late 1980s. I could easily have studied the stories by Los Bros as well as the works of Faulkner, Fitzgerald or Hemingway.

Their achievement in continuing these stories while progressing the characters over the last 40 years is unbelievable. Imagine - Spider-man is still a teen/in his 20's, while over the same period Maggie, Hopey and Luba have aged 40 years. This level of focused realism over decades is nearly impossible to sustain, and yet they have done it and continue to make top notch material.

I have a number of key pieces from each brother, most of which are in my CAF gallery, but I lacked perhaps the most important one - an early Jaime page. As I watched prices climb on these pages, I waited for one that would satisfy my criteria: an interim page, where Jaime was moving from his initial sci-fi heavy black style towards the clean line work he transitioned into. The page has to have the main characters on it and be one that moves the story ahead.

I finally found one this year. The page has Maggie (thrice), Hopey (thrice), Demona (thrice), Rand Race, Penny Century, H.R. (Herv) Costigan, for good measure, a conehead and a lump resembling Concrete, and a few other crazy characters that Jaime repurposed later (could that be Pepper in the first panel?).

Watching the transition of Jaime from self published issue 1 to Fantagraphics issues 1, 2 and 3 is thrilling. I was lucky enough to go through it in real time, and it still sends shivers down my spine when I read these issues, even knowing now what is to come. A grail piece, no doubt, but also a piece whose importance should be recognized as part of a classic American story.