'If Betty and Veronica were Latina punk lesbians'

Salon (relatively painless click-through ad required) talks with Jaime Hernandez about Locas and the 20-year-old "alt-comics phenomenon" that is Love & Rockets:

"... When I was a teenager, I was still doing superhero comics for myself, trying to create a universe of characters. I noticed that I really got into character interaction, people just talking and bouncing off each other, getting hot and cold -- and I wanted to create two characters like Maggie and Hopey that I could do that with forever, who could talk about anything. As their characters progressed, my whole universe revolved around them. Because that's what interested me most in storytelling: characterization.

"... When I first started doing it, I didn't really think about it. I just thought, they're two friends. They have fights, they get along, they back each other up. I just wanted my own Charlie Brown, my Betty and Veronica, my Batman. My own characters that would one day stand right next to Charlie Brown and Lucy, that kind of thing. But, you know, I wasn't holding my breath. I was thinking, Well, it'll be fun trying."