Fantagraphics Los Bros Hernandez books
   Love And Rockets: The Covers
   Love & Rockets Sketchbook One
   Love & Rockets Sketchbook Two
                                             (2013/1989 / 1992 - Fantagraphics Books)

The Covers (2013) A larger volume at 10-by-13-inches. Literally, the front & back cover-images of the first 50 issues of this ground-breaking comic magazine (and a number of story-collections). 144-pages, with 128 pages sporting full-page images, most as 'originals', without any non-situational typography, and about a third presented as full-bleed. 14 of the art-pages are presenting seven double-page-spreads that were, of course, wraparound covers for the magazine, so all remain 'o.k.' in this presentation. Another 8 pages, in a section entitled Author Notes, presents thumbnails of most of the displays, along with comments on each from the relevant brother. After the three full-page works by Mario Hernandez, the rest of pieces are almost exactly split between Gilbert and Jaime (or collaborations of the two).

Sketchbook Two (1992) (edited by Gary Groth) Not appropriate for children or adolescents. This second volume scores significantly better than the other and perusing the two descriptions should help tease out why. For this one, while I'm sure these are not Gilbert & Jaime Hernandez's most random doodles, this 144-page book seems about as close as one can get to just picking up their sketchbooks and flipping through them. It's split evenly between the two. For the work that they were known for at the time, Gilbert's finished product was a lot 'looser' than Jaime's, so his part of this sketchbook looks pretty much like his comics, if in a more stream-of-consciousness way, while the brother's sketches seemed far removed from what ended up in his part of the LOVE & ROCKETS periodicals (though there are some pieces that are quite 'finished', while some others are very effective in exploring other stylistic dynamics). 103 pages focus each on a single image, but this may be one of the rare cases where some of the sketches are so rough, that that might be felt as dedicating too much real estate to them. Anyway, another 32 pages do instead have multiple images. There is no text (other than occasional parodying titles, word balloons or comments-to-self). They both put many of the people from their comic on display - nudity was not shied away from there, and Gilbert's character studies here have quite a bit. Despite the cartoony nature of much of the work here, I keep this book put away from children because a few of the depictions are graphically of adult themes.

Sketchbook One (1989) (edited by Gary Groth) This one is also split evenly between the two artists, along with an small additional section of their music-scene flyers. This is a 176-page book with 52 of them each featuring a large dominating reproduction, and then another 79 with mixed multiple images. Another 37 mostly showcase sequential story pages, though some are just sporting very sketchy works. No examples of adult themes, but again, nudity usually figures into studying the human figure. More of the images here have a finished look - one might imagine that the best samples were gathered for this first volume. What amazed me here was that most of Gilbert's exhibit is him working in the same tight style that his brother continued on with - if you happen to prefer Jaime's usual 'look', you are definitely going to enjoy Gilbert's earlier work. As always, I'm amazed at the economy of line in their storytelling.