Posted in: Comics | Tagged: august 2021, Jaime Hernandez, love and rockets, wrestling

Jaime Hernandez To Publish 40 Years Of Women Wrestling Cartoons

Published Tue, 27 Oct 2020 08:20:35 -0500

Last updated Tue, 27 Oct 2020 14:37:53 -0500

Jaime Hernandez is best known as one of the Hernandez brothers, creators of the ongoing anthology comic book series, Love & Rockets. But Jaime has been working on something else all this time as well, now to be collected in Queen of the Ring: Wrestling Drawings, to be published in August next year. A body of work never seen before – though alluded to in much of his work, including the series Whoa Nellie.

For the past 40 years, acclaimed graphic novelist Jaime Hernandez has been creating a Love and Rockets-adjacent world ― set in the heyday of 1960s and '70s women's wrestling and lucha libre! ― with an entirely separate cast of characters who have aged and evolved: the beautiful and brutal Bettie Rey, the I.F.W. Pacific Women's Champion ― a.k.a. Golden Girl ― as well as former champions Pantera Negra, Miss Kitty Perez, and many more.

As Hernandez puts it, "It's my Love and Rockets world that's not my Love and Rockets world." This best-of book spotlights the women who are often ignored in pro wrestling in 125 full color illustrations: pin-ups, action shots, fake wrestling magazine covers, all presented in a large paperback format that echoes the lucha libre magazines of the 1960s. Hernandez also discusses the work in an interview with fellow cartoonist Katie Skelly.

Despite having created one of the most expansive and remarkable casts of characters of any cartoonist who ever lived (under the umbrella of the ongoing L&R comic book series), acclaimed graphic novelist Jaime Hernandez ― Will Eisner Hall of Famer; Eisner, Harvey, Ignatz, and PEN Award winner; L.A. Times Book Prize winner; and on a very short list of contenders for the title of America's Greatest Living Cartoonist ― has been privately amassing a body of work that no one else has ever seen for over 40 years. Until now. Full-color illustrations throughout.