Speaking of other people’s comics… Well, there’s really only one series I’ve got to mention, and that’s Love & Rockets. Written by brothers Jaime and Gilbert Hernandez, it is absolutely one of the reasons worth being alive. The first issue came out in 1981; in the time since then, they’ve created a whole lot of comic.

Jaime and Gilbert blow my mind. Their artistic styles (which share many similarities) are beautiful and efficient, conveying more with less, and consistently proving why it can be so, so worth it to work with just black and white. And that’s not even to mention their dialogue. Oh lord their dialogue. Maggie and Hopey and Carla and Luba are not just characters, they are real people—or at any rate that’s the only thing I can believe with dialogue as dead-on as theirs.

Gilbert’s stories were put together in a collection, “Palomar,” in 2003. Jaime’s work is compiled in “Locas,” from 2004. But the story isn’t over yet; head on over to Fantagraphics to get the latest installments of these characters—though I’d be lying if I said I didn’t get wistful and nostalgic watching them age.

The above drawing features my feeble copy (and slight alteration) of two of Jaime’s characters. On the left, Daphne, a minor character, and on the right, Margarita Luisa Chascarrillo (but mostly “Maggie” or “Perla”), his incredible heroine.

All right, enough gushing. We’ll just leave it at this: Los Bros Hernandez? Thanks for making comics.