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After Thought/s

Jaime Hernandez and the B/orderedPsychocultural Terrain of a Latina Writer

William A. Nericcio

Jaime (How to Kill a By Isabel Ruebens) and Gilbert Hernandez(Errata Stigmata) have transformed the comic book medium viatheir serialized graphic narratives in production since the early1980's. While Los Brothers Hernandez (as they are known to theirreaders/spectators) have been influenced by developments in theirown field, they are as likely to cite Picasso, Nietzsche, GarcaMrquez, Klee, Kahlo, or Modotti as they are Disney or Archiecomics (in particular Dan de Carlo of Betty and Veronica fame) asfigures who have influenced their development.

Crossing the checkpoint markers indicative of "high art"and so-called low-brow culture, the Hernandez Brothers spin theirCalifornia and Central American-based versions of a universe to adecidedly conjunto beat, with the counterpoint of speed-metal, rap,and punk laced generously throughout. As the Hernandez's workhas been linked with the mythic project associated with the nameWilliam Faulkner, it seems fitting to see their works as curiousciphered apocrypha that arrive via Yoknapatawpha translated intopictographs, reinterpreted in cinema, then rendered as a black andwhite comic book.

Southern Californian (Oxnard, CA) graphic storytellers of Mexican descent, the Hernandez Brothers map the contours of diverse, contentious and organic bodies populating and defining theborder regions. With "How to Kill a By Isabel Reubens," JaimeHernandez explores the most common problem confronting a writer:the writing blocka lurid cinematic exploration of this theme is tobe found in the Coen Brothers's tasty cinematic offering Barton

Fink. The first version of this short story appeared in 1981 in a self-published comic distributed by Jaime, Gilbert, and MarioHernandez. It then appeared in Love and Rockets 1 (FantagraphicsBooks, Fall 1982).

In this four-page opus, Isabel "Izzy" Reubens's writing blockis merely a telling establishing shot as Jaime Hernandez'sillustrations and words (strategically limited perhaps so as to un-derscore Izzys inability to produce them) interrogate what we mightcall la quiebra between words and images. 1 Here, la quiebradesignates an instance of fracture in the literal sense of tearing while

1See "Of Half-Breeds and Mestizo's: Orson Welles's Touch of Evil " in Chicanos and Film: Representation and Resistance , ed. Chon Noriega (Minneapolis: The Universityof Minnesota Press, 1992), 52-53.

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also communicating figuratively a state of bankruptcit goeswithout saying that the figural and literal meanings of the term sharemore than a storefront; to put it plainly, they are in cahoots. Amongthe many conflicts to identify in this shortest of short stories is thefractious dialogueone might call it a war, reall-between allthings linguistic and all things graphic. With Isabel Reubens'senchanting and disturbing writing block functioning at the level of allegory, readers/screeners of thses pages are as immersed in thecomplexity of borderline textuality as they are the mestizo culturaltraces of author/artist Jaime Hernandez.

Graphic narratives are bordertexts incorporating thedynamics of cinema, prose fiction, fine art, and cartooning. That theform is finding its most eloquent development in the talented handsof a border-infiltrated author just adds to our fun. The irony here isas delightful as it is significant: a mestizo-text produced by a mestizoartist/illustrator.

Brief Semiotic Gleanings

In panel 4 (p. 3), Hernandez pictures the contoursof Isabel Ruebenss unconscious. Here emotionalpressure brought on by, among other things, awriters block, is subjected to the absurd andabsurdly powerful forces of what Freud calledcondensation and displacement: Ruebens imaginesherself trapped underwater(she is 530ft beneaththe surface), writing ciphered clues (How to Kill aWri[ter])to herself on the glass window of a deeppool, through which we, readers and passivevoyeurs, gawk. The diagnosis for the armchairanalyst here is clear: Izzy is both despondent andsuicidal. What is exegetically more crucial howeveris the relationship between artist and medium

Hernandez, writer/illustrator, pictures a writers inability to write astory in a pantomimed comic largely without words, utterly free of dialogue.

Ruebens cannot write so she travels to a wrestling-mag-azine reading magician/sage/wizard who helps transporther to an altered state.

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Here, prior to this meeting, Ruebens flees her teeteringhouse. Note how Hernandez accentuates doors, frames andpassageways so as to underscore the young writers magical,mystical travel.

The writer, her psyche, her self: inHernandezs short graphic tale, the titleof the story becomes the fabric of theperson it mocks. Recall that this shorttale is about a woman writer whocannot, for whatever reason, finish astory. All the more ironic, then, that herbody should be made out of the un-raveling fabric of the interrupted titlethat heads this very story: text/textile;fabric/self. Hernandez, in short, digsparadox.

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