One of the many tiny pleasures in life is finding one of the cartoons by one (or both) of the Los Bros Hernandez in the letters page of an old Comics Journal, or some other early eighties fanzine. Some Marvel or DC superhero, doing something coy or silly, or just flexing their bod for evryone to see.
All of these little pieces of art are utterly charming and beautifully composed - these fuckers were incredibly talented, right from the start - and also show how much they love the goofy superheroes and supervillains. Everyone from the Sub Mariner to Bizarro to the freaking Space Phantom.
So they obviously still love all these old dopey characters when they're grown up and going to punk shows and doing their own comics, and even with all that affection, they never really did many comics actually published by Marvel of DC.
They would have short stories in a Strange Tales comic or one of Marvel's other many and noble attempts to nab some of the sweet alternative comix audience, or Gilbert would show up to write the adventures of Black Canary for a while.
But they showed they learned the best lessons from all that Jack Kirby they ingested, because Kirby's best advice on how someone should do the best Fantastic Four is that they should take the feeling it gave them, and try to make something new, and carve their own path.
Los Bros Hernandez certainly did that. Love and rockets, is still being published now and a new issue is due any week and I'm just as giddily excited as I was when I discovered the comic at 18, because there is still that unbridled love for comics and artistic craft in every new issue, just as their was in all the Kirby. It lasts for so much longer than another return trip to the Negative Zone.
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