Indie comics characters are often a tough sell in terms of merchandising, unless the characters exhibit some of the traditional “superhero” traits, like Judge Dredd or Spawn, but, even then, wildly popular characters like the Tick or Grendel who seem ideal for statues and toys never quite seem to get the foothold they should. There are, of course, success stories where indie characters were embraced by the mainstream and became household names, with the respective properties expanding successfully into different media with merchandising tie-ins galore. The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and The Walking Dead spring to mind as such titles.
But then there are indie comics that have quietly flown under the radar for years, even decades in some cases. They’re critical darlings and have loyal fan bases, but the characters and stories are seldom seen outside the actual comic. There’s a beautiful sort of quiet dignity in cases like this, but even still, there are some properties like this where I would love some kind of tangible representation of the characters on my shelf. One such pair of characters is Maggie and Hopey from Love and Rockets, the long-running indie comic by brothers Jaime and Gilbert Hernandez.
When I was in my very early teens, my local comic shop was a spot called FantaCo in Albany, NY. The staff at FantaCo seemed so cool to 14-year-old me: the were into cool music (they introduced me to The Replacements and Black Flag), they looked cool, they had lively and fun conversations in the shop, and they were constantly championing new and interesting comics during the “alternative comics” boom of the ‘80s. And they were all in love with Love and Rockets. That being the case, new issues of Love and Rockets were impossible to get unless you showed up on new comic night and managed to snag one before they disappeared. So I, desperately seeking their approval at age 13 or 14, started buying issues of Love and Rockets along with my usual X-Men, TMNT, and Batman comics.
Now, I’ve always claimed Art Adams to be my all-time favorite comic artist, but Jaime Hernandez is an extremely close second place. Jaime (or “Xamie” as he is sometimes known) had a very clean and sharp style that managed to leap off the black and white pages, and even though I had absolutely no idea what I was reading in those first few issues I picked up, I would stare and marvel at his panels and pages for hours. Thankfully, Jaime’s writing abilities were every bit as sharp as his pen-and-ink abilities, so I was quickly sucked into Maggie and Hopey’s punk rock world in early ‘80s Los Angeles, which may as well have been a different planet compared to the quiet, conservative community where I was growing up.
While other comics titles served up massive crossovers like “The Fall of the Mutants,” or managed to deconstruct the superhero genre as we knew it with monumental titles like Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns, Love and Rockets’ focus was microscopic in comparison. The Hernandez brothers tackled the everyday struggles of their characters, factoring in issues of loyalty, race, sexual identity, and body-image issues. But they made their stories completely engrossing and fascinating, even to a dumb, naive kid who had hardly any life experiences under his belt. Love and Rockets gave me a taste of the world beyond the small suburb where I grew up.
Jaime has been writing about Maggie and Hopey since Love and Rockets debuted way back in 1982, and in his stories his characters age in real time. In a sense, I feel as though I grew up with Maggie and Hopey, as well as Ray, Doyle, Penny Century — Jaime’s whole cast. They’ve been a part of my life for most of my life now, and while my shelves are littered with plastic representations of the likes of Wolverine, Batman, and Darth Vader, I feel that there is room for characters like Maggie and Hopey among those mighty heroes of our time. Not to mention, in the very early issues there was a sci-fi element to Maggie’s story, She was a futuristic solar panel mechanic who zipped around in futuristic vehicles, but this angle was soon abandoned in favor of a more realistic setting in LA. But if a focus on that very early material increases the chances of Love and Rockets plastic, then so be it.
I’m aware any demand for these is bound to be small, but with the announcement that an SDCC Saga 2-pack is coming later this month, it gave me renewed hope for my favorite indie comic. I mean, remove the sci-fi elements from Saga and what’s left isn’t all that different from Hernandez’s work, so that’s where I see the connection — the drama of family and trying to find one’s way in life. And that’s what Love and Rockets has always been about. So I would love a Love and Rockets 2-pack made up of Maggie and Hopey, even if it is just an exclusive made in extremely small numbers. Any way I can get them, I’ll take them.
