This year's installment of the annual LA Zine Fest has named its keynote speaker: alt-comics legend Jaime Hernandez, co-creator of Love and Rockets and a Southern California local.

Hernandez will be in conversation with Charles Hatfield, a CSU, Northridge professor and the author of Hand of Fire: The Comics Art of Jack Kirby and Alternative Comics: An Emerging Literature. The festival -- a growing show in its third year, dedicated to celebrating independent publishing -- is scheduled for Sunday, Feb. 16 at Helms Bakery in Culver City, with the list of exhibitors announced Tuesday.

Hernandez's next release is The Love Bunglers, scheduled for April 2014 from Fantagraphics and starring his long-running Love and Rockets protagonist Maggie. The publisher officially describes the hardcover thusly: "In taking us through lives, deaths, and near-fatalities, The Love Bunglers encapsulates Maggie’s emotional history as it moves from resignation to memories of loss, to sudden violence (a theme in this story), and eventually to love and contentment."