On Thursday, April 25, at 4:30 to 6:30pm, artists and authors Gilbert Hernandez and Jaime Hernandez, co-creators of the landmark comic book series Love and Rockets, will once again visit CSU Northridge. This FREE public appearance will be hosted by the class English 525HH: Los Bros Hernandez, a graduate course devoted to their work. This event marks the brothers' second joint appearance at CSUN. Professor Charles Hatfield, teacher of English 525HH, will moderate the event, which will be a freewheeling conversation including images and ample Q&A with the audience. This event will take place at the Noski Auditorium (at the corner of Etiwanda and Plummer) and is open to the community!
Gilbert Hernandez and Jaime Hernandez, together with their brother and occasional collaborator Mario Hernandez, are known to fans as “Los Bros." They continue to create the celebrated comic book Love and Rockets, launched in 1981, a pivotal work in the history of independent comics. In fact, Love and Rockets is one of the USA's most influential works of visual storytelling and graphic art over the past forty years. A groundbreaking Latina/o/x, queer-inclusive, and punk-influenced series, Love and Rockets was the first ongoing comic book to depict the true diversity of US culture, and is a key contribution to contemporary Chicana/o/x literature.
Love and Rockets, which recently celebrated its 40th anniversary,has been called one of “the hidden treasures of our impoverished culture” (The Nation). Accolades have come from New York Times Book Review, Publishers Weekly (“among the greatest comics ever put to paper”), and countless critics, teachers, artists, and fans. Los Bros have spoken at myriad comic cons and festivals, conferences, and universities. Prof. Charles Hatfield first taught a course on Los Bros back in 2012, which was a first for any university in America. He is delighted to be hosting Gilbert and Jaime once again. Here is how he describes their work:
Love and Rockets changed my life, and helped make me a professor! It also remade the landscape of US comics and comics criticism. Los Bros infused the neglected medium of the comic book with unquenchable new life, broadening comics' range and conjuring up a library’s worth of indelible characters, stories, and worlds. Gilbert and Jaime recast the American comic book in a more expansive, inclusive, culturally responsive mode. They brought to the comic book peoples, communities, and traditions that the US comics field had hardly ever had the guts to include, not to mention fearless depictions of ethnicity, class, sexuality, gender trouble, and hyphenated American identities. Simply put, Love and Rockets is THE benchmark for alternative comics in the 1980s and 1990s, and one of the great, enduring series in the annals of American comics!
Students, scholars, teachers, and fans of comics, graphic art, Latina/o/x literature, punk, or alternative media will be especially interested in this event. Teachers are encouraged to send their classes (attendance records will be provided). For further information, please reach out to Prof. Hatfield at charles.hatfield@csun.edu.
This event is kindly sponsored by the CSUN English Department and College of Humanities, with assistance from Fantagraphics Books.