BIOGRAPHY:

"My brother Jamie is unique because he's able to bridge good drawing, natural skill, with adult writing."

"He has this innate ability that very few artists have, to be be able to draw really well from his subconscious. Somehow, when he went to school, it unleashed that... It's not necessarily that the school taught him how to do that, it helped him unleash it. Once we started Love & Rockets, we were looking at pages, and I thought, Wow! I didn't know Jamie could draw this way."
Gilbert Hernandez, on brother Jamie.

Jamie (pronounced high-me) Hernandez (1959 - ) was born and raised in Oxnard, Southern California with his other four brothers and one sister. His father was a Mexican immigrant, married to a Texan from a family with deep Mexican roots. In her youth, his mother had collected comic books and that passion was passed on to her children. "It was nostalgic for her, I guess. So comics were always normal to us, it was an everyday thing. It wasn't until school that we realised that we were abnormal," commented brother Gilbert.

Raised on a diet of pop culture, comics, science fiction and monster movies all the family were drawing comics from an early age. However, for Gilbert and Jamie, that childhood passion never left them, even when punk rock gripped their lives in the late 1970's. At the urging of elder brother Mario, Jamie and Gilbert self-published the first issue of Love & Rockets, which was quickly picked up by then fledgling comic publisher, Fantagraphics, in 1982 and continues to this day.

Interviews:
The Onion (2005)
Comic Book Bin (2004)
Graphic Novel Review #2 (2004)
Salon.com (2004)
Suicide Girls (2003)
Comic Book Artist Vol 1 #15 (2000)
The Comics Journal #178 (1995)
The Comics Journal #126 (1989)

Resources:
Jamie Hernandez at the Comic Art Collective
Los Bros Hernandez at Fantagraphics
The Jamie Hernandez Chronology
Time.com: 21st Century Innovators

Reviews:
Time.com: Books Of The Year 2004
Guardian: Locus
Book Slut: Locas

Las Mujeres Perdidas
Fantagraphics, 1987
This early collection from Love & Rockets is startling because of Jamie's confident storytelling and art - even at the beginning of his career. The Lost Women is a great introduction to the world of Maggie The Mechanic - broken robots and rockets, and lots of love.

The Death Of Speedy
Fantagraphics, 1989
This book is a powerful self-contained story of LA street gangs, violent feuds and families. Speedy begins an affair with Maggie's younger sister, Esther, who is also romantically entangled with the leader of a rival gang. Tragedy is inevitable.

"In almost every way, this is a deeper and more complex work than anything Hernandez has done before. The Death Of Speedy greatly rewards rereading."
Top 100 Comics, The Comics Journal #210

Wigwam Bam
Fantagraphics, 1994
Hopey finds herself drifting in the world without the support of Maggie. Who has reported her missing and putting her picture on Have You Seen Me? milk carton adverts?

"Wigwam Bam is Jamie Hernandez's best realised long work, an amazingly rich meditation on the power memory has over one's everyday life... one of the best stories in any medium about memory, adulthood and loss."
Top 100 Comics, The Comics Journal #210

Graphic Novels:
Ghost Of Hoppers (2006)
Locus (2004)
Dicks And Deedees (2003)
Locas In Love (2000)
Whoa, Nellie! (2000)
Chester Square (1996)
Wigwam Bam (1994)
Flies On The Ceiling (1991)
The Death Of Speedy (1989)
House Of Raging Women (1988)
Las Mujeres Perdidas (1987)
Music For Mechanics (1985)

Periodicals:
Love & Rockets Vol2 #1-ongoing (2001- )
Penny Century #1-7 (1997-2000)
Maggie & Hopey Color Fun (1997)
Whoa, Nellie! #1-3 (1996)
Love & Rockets Vol1 #1-50 (1982-1996)

Other:
Mr X #1-4 with Gilbert Hernandez (1984-1985)
Love & Rockets Sketchbook #1-2 (1989-1992)