A review by flying_monkey
Is This How You See Me? by Jaime Hernández

emotional hopeful reflective medium-paced
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

The Hernandez brothers, Jaime and Gilberto are America comics legends, and their stories published as Love & Rockets from the early 80s onwards chronicle the lives of the eccentric inhabitantis of a small Mexican village (in the case of Gilerto's Heartbreak Soup) and for Jaime, the unconventional residents of Hoppers and Huerta, two heavily Mexican-American neighbourhoods in California: the punks, the lesbians, the drop-outs and the losers. Earlier stories had a hefty dose of magic realism, even science fiction, but over time these themes have given way to a more straight realism as Jaime continues to document his characters as they get fatter and older, and either get more conventional or continue to let their freak flags fly. I loved this latest volume, which covers just a few days during which the two central characters, Maggie and Hopey, get together again, and leave their boyfriend and wife respectively to attend a punk reunion back in the barrio. There are arguments, reunifications, bloody noses and mistakes, and interspersed between are episodes from the very early days when the two first met and became inseperable, at various times friends, lovers, partners-in-crime and more besides. You're left with a real sense of what growing up and growing older really entails and what you have to leave behind. 
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