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14 - Spatiotemporal Projections

Los Bros Hernandez, Fantagraphics, and the Rise of Latinx Creating and Reading Communities

from Part II - Graphic Novels and the Quest for an American Diversity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 January 2024

By
Frederick Luis Aldama
Edited by
Jan Baetens ,
Hugo Frey  and
Fabrice Leroy
Jan Baetens
Affiliation:
KU Leuven, Belgium
Hugo Frey
Affiliation:
University of Chichester
Fabrice Leroy
Affiliation:
University of Louisiana at Lafayette
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Summary

This chapter examines the birth and development of Latinx comics from the early 1980s to the present. It places the Hernandez Brothers (Los Bros Hernandez: Mario, Gilbert, and Jaime), their long-standing series Love and Rockets, and their alternative publisher Fantagraphics (with editor Gary Groth at the helm) at the center of this expansion. They opened new avenues of expression, production, and distribution of Latinx comics and graphic novels and influenced subsequent generations of Latinx authors. Under the generic umbrella of the series, the Brothers produced unique, single-authored narratives, whose threads were woven across individual volumes, forming a complex story world and creating wide story arcs of a novelistic nature. Stories set in the United States and south of the border portray multiple members and generations of the Latinx community, reflecting the lives and experiences of Latinx readers, left unrepresented in graphic fiction to that point. The chapter argues that today’s vibrant Latinx comics production (e.g., Emil Ferris’s My Favorite Thing Is Monsters) followed in the Hernandez brothers’ footsteps, with similar stories about everyday life, immigration, racism, and survival.

Keywords

LatinxHernandez BrothersFantagraphicssouth-of-the-borderEmil Ferris
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Companion to the American Graphic Novel , pp. 242 - 255
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

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References

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