Gilbert and Jaime Hernandez are featured in the Feb. 19^th issue of Time Magazine as part of a special on-going section entitled 'Innovators.'  This week's installment, which features Los Bros., is called 'The New Storytellers.'  Under the headline, 'Graphic Sketches of Latino Life,' writer Andrew D. Arnold compares their work to 'a Mexican -American TV soap opera written with Federico Garcia Lorca's dramatic intensity and passion for female characters but produced with the randy exuberance of a soft-core-porn video.' Arnold observes that 'Love and Rockets told complex stories about real people, bringing a literary narrative form to the comic-book frame,' while Jaime notes that 'We were basing all our stuff on our own lives.'

One of the key points of the article is made in the caption (under reproductions of the covers of Whoa Nellie! and Love and Rockets X ) which states that 'the brothers are in the vanguard of artists who are showing that illustrated stories aren't just kid stuff.'  Jaime echoes this concept when he states, 'We're inspiring a new generation that is taking comics pretty seriously, like real fiction.' 

In a fortuitous bit of timing (or good pr), the relaunch of the Love and Rockets series--the new Love and Rockets #1-- shipped to comic shops this week.  Retailers can make use of this exposure by displaying the Time article on Los Bros. along with L&R #1 preferably in store windows to attract walk-ins.  Any kind of outreach to local alternative papers (many will actually review comics) can pay big dividends with the work of the Hernandez brothers, both because there is a huge untapped potential audience for their work and because much of their extensive backlist remains in print and available from their publisher Fantagraphics Books as well as from distributors such as Diamond, FM, and Coldcut (to varying degrees).  As noted here before (see 'Safe Area Gorazde Reviewed in NY Times') the American literary establishment is starting to realize that there is a lot of great work being done in the comics medium.  The potential audience for 'serious' graphic novels is great and the barriers of intellectual prejudice that held sales down are starting to fall as this article in Time illustrates.  Now is the time to reach out and try to snag new readers, and there are few, if any, better vehicles for doing so than the works of the brothers Hernandez.  The full Time article can be viewed at http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,98955,00.html.