Member Since March 2021
152 Artworks | Watched by 53

Q&A with Mark V

Which piece in your gallery is your favorite and why?

I have a hard time choosing between any of my Jaime Hernandez pages, but it would probably have to be the cover to Love and Rockets #26.

Please tell us a little about yourself.

Former academic who now works in a tech-adjacent field. Being a long-time comics reader and scholar prepared me well for being an OA collector. I know what I like and appreciate but I'm also curious about all the great work being produced today. This is a great time to be both a comics reader and art collector.

How long have you been collecting comic art and what prompted you to start?

I've only been collecting for five years as of May 2026 and hope to make it a long-term hobby. I was reading a back issue of Love and Rockets and saw in the letters page that Jaime Hernandez was selling original art exclusively through Heritage. Within two weeks I had my first page of original art!

How do you display/store your collection at home?

I have several favorite pieces framed but, for now, pretty much everything lives in my Itoyas.

What are your top five most wanted original pages or commissions?

1) A cover from volume 1 of the original Love and Rockets series 2) The cover to Hate #1 by Peter Bagge 3) A page of original art (anything) by Julie Doucet

Grail

Love and Rockets #26 Cover (1988)

11x14 original cover art to LOVE AND ROCKETS VOLUME ONE #26, published in 1988 by Fantagraphics.

A special piece from a groundbreaking comic series, drawn by the greatest living cartoonist. This cover epitomizes so much of what I love about Jaime's Locas stories: peerless cartooning with energy and attitude to spare in service of stories featuring authentic, complex characters.

Jaime Hernandez and his brother Gilbert alternated front cover duties over Love and Rockets' original 50-issue run, with Jaime drawing a little over half. Of those 25+ Jaime front covers, this one is a longtime standout for its playful and irreverent moment between Jaime and Maggie Chascarillo, the character whose life story Jaime has told over the past 40+ years.

And what a meta moment this cover depicts! Reflected in a mirror, Jaime sits at his board, exasperated, while Maggie shows just how much (or little) she respects his artistic process. This wasn't the first time in the series Jaime drew himself alongside his Locas characters and it wouldn't be the last (see additional image). At the time of this piece, Jaime was on the cusp of his thirtieth birthday, and in how he depicts himself you can see some of the markers of the transition into full adulthood (the paunch, most obviously).

I never expected to acquire a cover from the original run of Love and Rockets although I had posted on the CGC boards years ago that I was looking for this specific cover. It hung on Jaime Hernandez’s wall for years and was the very last cover he held onto from Volume One of the original run before ultimately selling it. I’d like to thank the collector who bought it from Jaime for thinking of me and giving me the opportunity to acquire it.

About The Owner

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Member Since: March 2021
Last Login: April 2026
Country: UNITED STATES
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Grail

Love and Rockets #26 Cover (1988)

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