Knowledge Waits is a feature where I just share some bit of comic book history that interests me.

In the very early 1980s, before Jaime Hernandez first published Love and Rockets as an independent comic book, he did some spot illustrations for Fantagraphics. Back in the day, Fantagraphics would often pepper The Comics Journal and Amazing Heroes with art submitted by artists. In 1981, the Hernandez Brothers put out Love and Rockets #1. The following year, Fantagraphics took over publishing the iconic independent series, with Jaime being best known for Locas, a story following a group of characters over the course of a number of decades, basically since they were young punks in the early 1980s until now, when they're middle-aged adults. The two main characters in Locas are Margarita Luisa "Maggie" Chascarrillo and Esperanza Leticia "Hopey" Glass.

Anyhow, I thought it would be fun to spotlight some of Herneandez's spot illustrations in those Fantagraphics magazines from the 1980s, to show folks that might have missed these awesome drawings the first time around (it's not like they're collected, ya know?).

TIED UP WONDER WOMAN

This is the first piece, from way back in 1980!

SUPERGIRL

Hernandez did this gorgeous drawing to go along with part two of a Supergirl history by Dwight Decker in Amazing Heroes #19.

SUPERGIRL MAD AT SUPERMAN

This one went along with part of that aforementioned Supergirl history. You see, when Supergirl first came to Earth, her existence was kept a secret by Superman. She was his emergency weapon. The issue, of course, is that he did this sort of unilaterally and it wasn't exactly the most fair thing in the world and over the years, a number of people have had a little fun with Superman's treatment of Supergirl. Here, Hernandez draws Supergirl forcing Superman to let her reveal her existence to the world.

MAGGIE AS ROBIN

This pin-up that ran in Comics Journal was later used by John Byrne to explain to Frank Miller that Miller ought to have Robin be female in the then-upcoming Dark Knight Returns series. So this is probably the most historic of all of the drawings featured.

WONDER WOMAN AGAIN

Another beautiful Wonder Woman piece by Hernandez.

Page 2: [valnet-url-page page=2 paginated=0 text='Hernandez's first official DC work!']

SUPERMAN

I honestly don't get the joke here. The reverse lettering suggests it is a Bizarro riff, but if so, I don't get it.

For DC's Who's Who series, Hernandez got to do his first "official" DC drawings, by doing the illustrations for Phantom Girl's entry...

PHANTOM GIRL

and Shrinking Violet...

SHRINKING VIOLET

Bob Greenberger, who was one of the editors on the project, explained how Hernandez came to draw the two Legionnaires:

I adored his work on Love and Rockets so I reached out to him (or spoke to him at San Diego, memory fades) and asked what he wanted to draw. He said Legionnaires so I was delighted to accommodate him with terrific results.

Awesome stuff! What a great artist he is!

I believe he also did some work for the collected edition of the DC History of the Universe, but as I do not own that book, I do not know what it looks like. If someone wants to scan in Hernandez's drawing from that collection, feel free to send it to me at brianc@cbr.com and I'll add it to this piece!

If anyone else has a piece of comic book history that you'd like to see me write about, drop me a line at brianc@cbr.com!