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Book Cover for: Life Drawing: A Love and Rockets Collection, Jaime Hernandez

Life Drawing: A Love and Rockets Collection

Jaime Hernandez

Ten years in the making (and torn from the pages of the legendary Love and Rockets), Jaime Hernandez's newest graphic novel skillfully weaves two generations of his beloved characters into a satisfying story of love--both young and middle-aged. Life Drawing darts primarily between the youthful Tonta and the venerable Maggie. Tonta has a crush on her art teacher, Ray, as well as an axe to grind with an older woman in the neighborhood. When Tonta finds that the woman, Maggie, is married to Ray, things get complicated. And Tonta does not handle complications well.

Life Drawing showcases Hernandez's brilliant talent for character, weaving relationships, rejections, infidelities, and adventures involving: Tonta's self-involved sisters Vivian, Violet, and Muñeca; her colorful pals Gomez, Judy Fair, and Brown Alice; her mother, the infamous 'Black Widow of the Valley'; and of course, the two great loves of Maggie's life, Ray and Hopey. There's also a forest spirit, two weddings, some cosplay, a little pole dancing, and page after page of breathtaking comics by the medium's most wide-eyed romantic. Did we mention the weddings?

Book Details

  • Publisher: Fantagraphics Books
  • Publish Date: Feb 25th, 2025
  • Pages: 136
  • Language: English
  • Edition: undefined - undefined
  • Dimensions: 11.60in - 9.40in - 0.70in - 1.85lb
  • EAN: 9798875000492
  • Categories: LiteraryContemporary WomenLGBTQ+ - General

About the Author

Hernandez, Jaime: - Jaime Hernandez was one of six siblings born and raised in Oxnard, California. His mother passed down a love of comics, which for Jaime became a passion rivaled only by his interest in the burgeoning punk rock scene of 1970s Southern California. Together with his brothers Gilbert and Mario, Jaime co-created the ongoing comic book series Love and Rockets in 1981, which Gilbert and Jaime continue to both write and draw to this day. Jaime's work began as a perfect (if unlikely) synthesis of the anarchistic, do-it-yourself aesthetic of the punk scene and an elegant cartooning style that recalled masters such as Charles M. Schulz and Alex Toth. Love and Rockets has evolved into one of the great bodies of American literary fiction, spanning five decades and countless high-water marks in the medium's history. In 2016, Hernandez won the prestigious Los Angeles Times Book Prize for his graphic novel, The Love Bunglers. In 2017, he (along with Gilbert) was inducted into the Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame, and, in 2018, he released his first children's book, the Aesop Book Prize-winning The Dragon Slayer: Folktales from Latin America. He is a lifelong Angeleno.

Praise for this book

Love and Rockets is the rare pop cultural artifact that renders Latinas not as archetypes, but as rich and profound human beings full of messy contradiction and ambivalence.-- "Los Angeles Times"
The simplicity of Hernandez's page designs and the elegant economy of his drawing style belie the thoughtful sophistication of his storytelling... .[A] heartbreakingly satisfying achievement.-- "Booklist"