The dialogue was clipped, sometimes profane, emotionally truthful. When I started reading, I had no idea what a pro-solar mechanic might be, and it took a minute to orient myself to the visual progression of the panels, full of jump cuts, unlike the British and many of the mainstream, contemporary novels I more frequently immersed myself within. Too shy to seek out the other writers in my fiction-writing cohort who were staying in the same dorm, and relieved to be, finally, alone, I pulled the book out and began reading. A thunderstorm-the sort we rarely get in California-was coming.
It was raining and humid and the sky was purplish. It was the only book I’d packed because I planned to get some short story writing of my own done. I didn’t get around to reading it, however, until that summer at a writers’ conference in Iowa. The one I bought was the Jaime Hernandez and Gilbert Hernandez compilation Las Mujeres Perdidas. Later that day, I dropped by Cody’s Books on Telegraph Avenue, now shuttered, and searched for the comic book. As it turned out, the band had named itself after the comic book series. Perhaps my curiosity was spurred, too, because I was a fan of “So Alive,” a song by the alternative-rock band Love and Rockets, and wondered what the connection was. Literary critic Laura Miller, whose work I avidly followed, had recommended the comics, first published by Fantagraphics Books in 1982, in Salon. I found Los Bros Hernandez’s singular comic book series Love and Rockets 20-something years ago while browsing the internet in the computer lab between classes.
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