Life Drawing: Expanding the Love and Rockets cast of characters

Life Drawing by Jaime Hernandez

“I guess that’s what spending summer with a crazy aunt is like,” Tonta reports after hanging out with Maggie, the long-time star of Jaime Hernandez’s Love and Rockets which has now been running for over forty years. And while Maggie, and Hopey, too, appear in Life Drawing, the focus is on this newer character in the series — Tonta. Tonta is a wonderful character who seems to be the center of attention of a dynamic cast of characters, including Gomez, Judy Fair, Brown Alice, and Moses as well as her sisters and their accompanying group of friends. While this collection of related tales is perhaps not the best place to jump into the Love and Rockets story for those completely new to the characters, it is a great treat for fans of this series. And yet, I still think those new to the series would enjoy the book.

Tonta, a young woman recently out of high school, constantly gets into trouble creating difficult situations, the most important of which is her initial confrontation with Maggie. Tonta and her friend Judy Fair, sort of attack Maggie. Tonta does not know that Maggie is in a long-term relationship with Ray Dominguez, who is Tonta’s art teacher (on whom she has a light student-teacher crush). But Tonta eventually apologizes to Maggie, and they become friends, with Tonta’s helping Maggie get over her fear of the ocean. There are quite a few great scenes with the two of them on the beach, with Jaime Hernandez, with his usual concise storytelling, conveying an evolving relationship with very few pages of art. Hernandez’s economy of panels is always amazing, but it has gotten even more impressive over the years.

Tonta’s relationships are the heart of the story. She seems to be constantly having crushes, and she is surprised that quite a few of her friends seem to have crushes on her, including, perhaps most importantly Brown Alice who is in a love triangle with Tonta and Moses. Moses dates Brown Alice but seems to be obsessed with Tonta. Eventually, Tonta and Brown Alice leave Moses behind and hook up. It is all funny on one level, but Jaime Hernandez conveys well the seriousness which these younger characters take the constant ups and downs of dramatic love crises.

Gomez is another friend, and Tonta is upset when she leaves for college. The story of Life Drawing is framed by Gomez’s presence in the book: She shows up in the first few pages of the graphic novel, is present for the beginning of the narrative, goes away to college, and then eventually comes back for vacation, appearing in the final panels of the story. Gomez shares Tonta’s love of comics, and they both create some handmade comics that they staple together to sell at the local comic book convention. They seem to have an unbreakable bond, and their friendship has been developed for years before Life Drawing and told in the graphic novel Tonta, a collection of Love and Rocket stories that came out in 2019 but created over the years before that.

As one would expect from stories about Tonta, her sister Vivian, or Frog Mouth, plays a major role. Vivian has been a character in Love and Rockets for many years — she is a drop-dead gorgeous young woman with a voice that can shatter glass. And she has known Maggie and Ray for a long time — she has been intimate with both of them at various times over the years, so when Vivian reveals her jealousy in two brilliant panels, they are the build-up of many years of turmoil in this complex three-way relationship. In one panel, she looks at Maggie and, in her caustic voice, tries to belittle her in dramatic fashion when they are alone. But in a later panel, where we see Vivian looking at Maggie with Ray, we get to see her feelings depicted even more vividly. It is for these individual panels that long-time readers return again and again to Love and Rockets — these single images depict facial expressions that communicate a great deal of emotion that carry with them the history of decades-old relationships.

There are other characters—like Frank Lopez, Angel, and Hopey—who seem to have just a few cameos. But it is wonderful to see these other familiar faces in the story, and Life Drawing is really at its best in weaving together a complex set of relationships in thirty different short stories (or chapters, if we call this a graphic novel rather than a collection). And Jaime Hernandez’s artwork is not only as impressive as always, it is, in my opinion, even better than it was twenty years ago. He seems to get better with the passing years. So, for me, this is another five-star volume in the Love and Rockets series. As always, I look forward to the next stories Jaime Hernandez decides to tell.