18 Facts About Gilbert Hernandez

Gilbert Hernandez was born and grew up in Oxnard, California to a Mexican father and Texas-born mother.

Gilbert Hernandez had five brothers and one sister, raised by their mother and grandmother, as their father was rarely around.

Young Gilbert read all he could, with the exception of romance comics.

Gilbert Hernandez set his passions on becoming a graphic storyteller, learning everything he could by studying what he found in comics, while developing his drawing skills through constant practice.

Gilbert Hernandez found high school boring, sympathizing neither with the jock nor the nerd crowds, and called himself and his brothers "just regular rock 'n' roll guys", and would make his way to Los Angeles for excitement.

Gilbert Hernandez's drawing skills were admired by his peers, who urged him to aim at a career in drawing superheroes.

Gilbert Hernandez tried to learn more formal drawing skills, taking night classes in figurative drawing, but the apathy of his teacher drove him to quit.

Gilbert Hernandez made the decision to focus on comics when he got into high school, and upon finishing high school he devoted what energy he could towards that goal.

Gilbert Hernandez was particularly enamored with the work that Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko produced for Marvel Comics, as well as Hank Ketcham's Dennis the Menace and the Archie comics line.

In particular, the "Brothers Gilbert Hernandez" were influenced by the energy and diversity of the late 1970s California punk and hardcore scene.

Gilbert Hernandez has credited punk rock with giving him the confidence to start drawing his own comics.

Gilbert Hernandez did the cover artwork for the record Limbo by Throwing Muses.

Gilbert Hernandez continued with Luba and her family in series such as Luba, Luba's Comics and Stories, and edited to the children's anthology Measles before its early demise.

The new series was published in standard comic-book size, and in it Gilbert Hernandez focused on shorter stories that didn't rely on continuity.

In 2009, Gilbert Hernandez published The Troublemakers, his second solo graphic novel with the publisher, inspired by pulp novels and heist films.

Gilbert Hernandez said he drew a large influence from humorously exaggerated, naturalistic artists such as Dan DeCarlo, Harry Lucey and Bob Bolling's work on various Archie Comics titles.

The style of Gilbert Hernandez's work has been described as magic realism or as "magic-realist take on Central American soap opera".

Gilbert Hernandez is co-creator and co-star of The Naked Cosmos, an eccentric low-budget TV show about a cosmic prophet known as Quintas.