Episode 469: Gilbert Hernandez

Even among a list of peers that includes names titles like Eightball and Hate, there’s a strong case to be made that Love and Rockets is the most influential comic of its generation. It’s a fact that puts the series high on the all-time list.

The 40-year-old series began in 1980 as a self-published book that was soon picked up by Fantagraphics.

Two years in, Gilbert Hernandez gave the world “Heartbreak Soup,” a story that kicked off Palomar, a long-running exploration of magical realism in a Latin American village of the same name.

It’s Hernandez’s longest-running storyline, and the one which which he has become most closely associated.

Four decades later, the artist continues to grow and experiment, as evidenced by the recently released Hypnotwist/Scarlet by Starlight, a collection of two graphic novellas that embrace dramatically different forms of storytelling.