Gilbert Hernandez
Encyclopedia
Oxnard, California
Oxnard is the 113th largest city in the United States, 19th largest city in California and largest city in Ventura County, California, by way of population. It is located at the western edge of the fertile Oxnard Plain, and is an important agricultural center, with its distinction as the...
, California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
, usually credited as Gilbert Hernandez and also known by the nickname
Nickname
A nickname is "a usually familiar or humorous but sometimes pointed or cruel name given to a person or place, as a supposedly appropriate replacement for or addition to the proper name.", or a name similar in origin and pronunciation from the original name....
Beto (ˈbeto), is an American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
comics
Comics
Comics denotes a hybrid medium having verbal side of its vocabulary tightly tied to its visual side in order to convey narrative or information only, the latter in case of non-fiction comics, seeking synergy by using both visual and verbal side in...
writer
Writer
A writer is a person who produces literature, such as novels, short stories, plays, screenplays, poetry, or other literary art. Skilled writers are able to use language to portray ideas and images....
/artist
Artist
An artist is a person engaged in one or more of any of a broad spectrum of activities related to creating art, practicing the arts and/or demonstrating an art. The common usage in both everyday speech and academic discourse is a practitioner in the visual arts only...
. Along with his brothers Jaime
Jaime Hernandez
Jaime Hernandez is the co-creator of the black & white independent comic book Love and Rockets .-Early life:...
and Mario
Mario Hernandez
Mario Hernandez is an American writer, artist, and sometime publisher of comics. Along with his younger brothers Gilbert and Jaime he co-created the acclaimed independent comic book Love and Rockets.- Biography :...
he co-created the acclaimed independent comic book
Comic book
A comic book or comicbook is a magazine made up of comics, narrative artwork in the form of separate panels that represent individual scenes, often accompanied by dialog as well as including...
Love and Rockets, published by Fantagraphics Books
Fantagraphics Books
Fantagraphics Books is an American publisher of alternative comics, classic comic strip anthologies, magazines, graphic novels, and the adult-oriented Eros Comix imprint...
.
Early life
Hernández grew up in Oxnard, CaliforniaOxnard, California
Oxnard is the 113th largest city in the United States, 19th largest city in California and largest city in Ventura County, California, by way of population. It is located at the western edge of the fertile Oxnard Plain, and is an important agricultural center, with its distinction as the...
, in a family of five brothers and one sister. He was exposed to comic books early in life through his mother, who passed on her love of the medium to her children. He was particularly enamored with the work that Jack Kirby
Jack Kirby
Jack Kirby , born Jacob Kurtzberg, was an American comic book artist, writer and editor regarded by historians and fans as one of the major innovators and most influential creators in the comic book medium....
and Steve Ditko
Steve Ditko
Stephen J. "Steve" Ditko is an American comic book artist and writer best known as the artist co-creator, with Stan Lee, of the Marvel Comics heroes Spider-Man and Doctor Strange....
produced for Marvel Comics
Marvel Comics
Marvel Worldwide, Inc., commonly referred to as Marvel Comics and formerly Marvel Publishing, Inc. and Marvel Comics Group, is an American company that publishes comic books and related media...
, as well as Hank Ketcham
Hank Ketcham
Henry King "Hank" Ketcham was an American cartoonist who created the Dennis the Menace comic strip, writing and drawing it from 1951 to 1994, when he retired from drawing the daily page and took up painting full time in his studio at his home. He received the Reuben Award for the strip in 1953...
's Dennis the Menace
Dennis the Menace (U.S.)
Dennis the Menace is a daily syndicated newspaper comic strip originally created, written and illustrated by Hank Ketcham. It debuted on March 12, 1951 in 16 newspapers and was originally distributed by Post-Hall Syndicate...
and the Archie comics
Archie Comics
Archie Comics is an American comic book publisher headquartered in the Village of Mamaroneck, Town of Mamaroneck, New York, known for its many series featuring the fictional teenagers Archie Andrews, Betty Cooper, Veronica Lodge, Reggie Mantle and Jughead Jones. The characters were created by...
line. His brother Mario was responsible for introducing Gilbert to the underground comix
Underground comix
Underground comix are small press or self-published comic books which are often socially relevant or satirical in nature. They differ from mainstream comics in depicting content forbidden to mainstream publications by the Comics Code Authority, including explicit drug use, sexuality and violence...
movement when he smuggled a copy of Zap Comix
Zap Comix
Zap Comix is the best-known and one of the most popular of the underground comics that emerged as part of the youth counterculture of the late 1960s. While not believed to be the first underground comic to have been published, Zap is considered to mark the beginning of the "underground comix"...
into the house. Another big influence on Hernández's work has been rock music, including punk
Punk subculture
The punk subculture includes a diverse array of ideologies, and forms of expression, including fashion, visual art, dance, literature, and film, which grew out of punk rock.-History:...
, new wave
New Wave music
New Wave is a subgenre of :rock music that emerged in the mid to late 1970s alongside punk rock. The term at first generally was synonymous with punk rock before being considered a genre in its own right that incorporated aspects of electronic and experimental music, mod subculture, disco and 1960s...
and glitter rock. In particular, the "Brothers Hernández" were influenced by the energy and diversity of the late 70's California punk and hardcore scene. Hernández has credited punk rock
Punk rock
Punk rock is a rock music genre that developed between 1974 and 1976 in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. Rooted in garage rock and other forms of what is now known as protopunk music, punk rock bands eschewed perceived excesses of mainstream 1970s rock...
with giving him the confidence to start drawing his own comics.
Career
In the early 1980s, both Jaime and Gilbert created flyer and cover art for local bands. He also did the cover artwork for the record Limbo by Throwing MusesThrowing Muses
Throwing Muses is an alternative rock band formed in 1981 in Newport, Rhode Island, that toured and recorded extensively until 1997, when its members began concentrating more on other projects. The group was originally fronted by two lead singers, Kristin Hersh and Tanya Donelly, who both wrote the...
. The alternative rock band Love and Rockets
Love and Rockets (band)
Love and Rockets were an English alternative rock band formed in 1985 by former Bauhaus members Daniel Ash , David J , and Kevin Haskins . Former Bauhaus vocalist Peter Murphy had embarked on a solo career after Bauhaus split in 1983...
was named after the Hernández brothers' comic book.
The first wider recognition of Gilbert and his brothers' work occurred in 1982, after they had sent in a copy of their Love & Rockets comic, which up to that point they had been self publishing, to the Comics Journal, the foremost U.S. magazine of news and criticism pertaining to comic books and strips. This led to their work being published by the then just established Fantagraphics books. Between 1996 and 2001, the Love & Rockets series was temporarily suspended, while each brother, including Gilbert, pursued solo projects. During this time Gilbert created New Love, Luba, and Luba's Comics and Stories. After its resumption, Love & Rockets continued to be published by Fantagraphics on an annual basis. In 2009, Gilbert published The Troublemakers, his second solo graphic novel with the publisher, inspired by pulp novels
Pulp magazine
Pulp magazines , also collectively known as pulp fiction, refers to inexpensive fiction magazines published from 1896 through the 1950s. The typical pulp magazine was seven inches wide by ten inches high, half an inch thick, and 128 pages long...
and heist film
Heist film
A heist film is a film that has an intricate plot woven around a group of people trying to steal something. Versions with dominant or prominent comic elements are often called caper movies. They could be described as the analogues of caper stories in film history...
s. This has continued a trend he started with Chance in Hell and Speak of the Devil; all three books are faux adaptations of fictional B-movies.
Gilbert's main work is Palomar
Palomar (graphic novel)
Palomar is the title of a graphic novel written and drawn by Gilbert Hernandez and published in 2003 by Fantagraphics Books . It collects work previously published within the pages of Love and Rockets . Palomar is the fictional town in Latin America where all the stories presented are set...
, a story about the inhabitants of small fictional village of the same name, located somewhere in Central America. Other well known titles with significant contributions from Gilbert include Music for Mechanics
Music for Mechanics
Music for Mechanics is the first album of the American comics series Love and Rockets written and drawn by Los Bros Hernandez and published in 1985.The cover of the compilation is by Jaime Hernandez and the preface by Carter Scholz.-Contents:...
(1985), Tears from Heaven
Tears from Heaven
Tears from Heaven is the fourth album of the American comics series Love and Rockets written and drawn by Los Bros Hernandez, Gilbert and Jaime, and published in 1988.The cover of the compilation is by Gilbert Hernandez, the back cover by Jaime...
(1988), House of Raging Women
House of Raging Women
House of Raging Women is the fifth album of the American comics series Love and Rockets written and drawn by Los Bros Hernandez, Gilbert and Jaime, and published in 1988....
(1988) and Heartbreak Soup (2007). He has also published several titles with other publishers, such as Dark Horse Comics
Dark Horse Comics
Dark Horse Comics is the largest independent American comic book and manga publisher.Dark Horse Comics was founded in 1986 by Mike Richardson in Milwaukie, Oregon, with the concept of establishing an ideal atmosphere for creative professionals. Richardson started out by opening his first comic book...
, Titan Books
Titan Books
Titan Publishing Group is an independently owned publishing company, established in 1981. It is based at offices in London, England's Bankside area. The Books Division has two main areas of publishing: film & TV tie-ins/cinema reference books; and graphic novels and comics reference/art titles. The...
and Vertigo Comics. Since 2008 he has moved away from his old characters and explored new themes.
Critical analysis and reception
The style of Gilbert's work has been described as magic realismMagic realism
Magic realism or magical realism is an aesthetic style or genre of fiction in which magical elements blend with the real world. The story explains these magical elements as real occurrences, presented in a straightforward manner that places the "real" and the "fantastic" in the same stream of...
or as "magic-realist take on Central American soap opera". A common theme is the portrayal of independent women, and their strength, with the main example being Luba of Palomar. His stories often deal with issues relevant to Latino culture in the United States. According to Dominican-American writer and MIT creative writing professor Junot Díaz
Junot Díaz
Junot Díaz is a Dominican-American writer and creative writing professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology . Central to Díaz's work is the immigrant experience...
, Gilbert Hernández ideally would be considered "one of the greatest American storytellers".
Along with his brother Jaime, Gilbert has been named as one of Time
Time (magazine)
Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...
’s "Top 100 Next Wave Storytellers" in 2009. He is also co-creator and co-star (with his wife, Carol Kovinick) of The Naked Cosmos, an eccentric low-budget TV show about a cosmic prophet known as Quintas.
Notable works
- Love and Rockets X
- Palomar (graphic novel) (2003) Fantagraphics BooksFantagraphics BooksFantagraphics Books is an American publisher of alternative comics, classic comic strip anthologies, magazines, graphic novels, and the adult-oriented Eros Comix imprint...
- Sloth (graphic novel) (2006) Vertigo Comics
- Heartbreak Soup (2007) Fantagraphics Books
- Human Diastrophism (2007) Fantagraphics Books
- Beyond Palomar (2007) Fantagraphics Books
- Speak of the Devil (2007-8) Dark Horse ComicsDark Horse ComicsDark Horse Comics is the largest independent American comic book and manga publisher.Dark Horse Comics was founded in 1986 by Mike Richardson in Milwaukie, Oregon, with the concept of establishing an ideal atmosphere for creative professionals. Richardson started out by opening his first comic book...
- Luba (2009) Fantagraphics Books
Awards
- 1986 Kirby AwardKirby AwardThe Jack Kirby Award for achievement in comic books was presented from 1985-1987 by Amazing Heroes magazine, and managed by Fantagraphics employee Dave Olbrich...
for Best Black & White Series for Love & Rockets (Fantagraphics BooksFantagraphics BooksFantagraphics Books is an American publisher of alternative comics, classic comic strip anthologies, magazines, graphic novels, and the adult-oriented Eros Comix imprint...
) - 1986 Inkpot AwardInkpot AwardThe Inkpot Award, bestowed annually since 1974 by Comic-Con International, is given to some of the professionals in comic book, comic strip, animation, science fiction, and related pop-culture fields, who are guests of that organization's yearly multigenre fan convention, commonly known as...
- 1989 Harvey AwardHarvey AwardThe Harvey Awards, named for writer-artist Harvey Kurtzman and founded by Gary Groth, President of the publisher Fantagraphics, are given for achievement in comic books. The Harveys were created as part of a successor to the Kirby Awards which were discontinued after 1987.The Harvey Awards are...
for Best Writer for Love & Rockets (Fantagraphics) - 1990 Harvey Award for Best Writer for Love & Rockets (Fantagraphics)
- 1989 Harvey Award for Best Continuing or Limited Series for Love and Rockets (Fantagraphics)
- 1990 Harvey Award for Best Continuing or Limited Series for Love and Rockets (Fantagraphics)
- 2001 Harvey Award for Best New Series for Luba's Comix and Stories (Fantagraphics)
- 2004 Harvey Award for Best Single Issue or Story for Love and Rockets #9 (Fantagraphics)
- 2009 Fellow Award from United States ArtistsUnited States ArtistsUnited States Artists is an independent nonprofit and nongovernmental philanthropic organization based in Los Angeles, California and dedicated to supporting the work of living American artists by the granting of cash awards, called USA Fellowships...