Jaime Hernandez, born in 1959, enjoyed a pleasant childhood in Oxnard, California, with four brothers and one sister. Their mother had been an avid comic book fan as a girl, and she passed onto them a love of Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko's Marvel comics, Hank Ketcham's Dennis the Menace, and the Archie comics line. A further strain was added when an older brother smuggled R. Crumb's Zap into the house.
As puberty and other interests invaded, Jaime's enthusiasm for mainstream comics waned. The Los Angeles punk rock scene began to thrive, and the anarchistic and gritty aesthetic invaded Jaime's approach to writing and drawing. Mostly self-taught, Jaime assimilated these influences, and in his hands the much-hyped and often misunderstood punk netherworld became a very real, habitable place populated with human beings rather than stereotypes.
Such were the humble beginnings of Love & Rockets, the internationally acclaimed series Jaime created with his brother, Gilbert, in 1981. 15 years later, Love & Rockets has been translated into several languages, won numerous awards for excellence, and has set the standard for alternative comics in the 1980s and '90s. Having finished up his first post-Love & Rockets comic book series, Whoa, Nellie!, while playing bass in an L.A. punk band, Jaime is focusing most of his time currently on new ongoing series, Penny Century, which won the 1998 Harvey Award for "Best New Series." He resides in Studio City, California.
Love and Rockets: Music For Mechanics (vol. 1)