Angels and Magpies by Jaime Hernandez, and: Is This How You See Me? by Jaime Hernandez (review)

Jaime Hernandez's Is This How You See Me? is the latest installment in his long-running Locas series, collecting comics that have been serialized over the past five years. The page announcing the first chapter features Hernandez's signature character, Maggie Chascarrillo, taking a selfie in front of a mirror. Above her, the chapter's title captions the image: "Do I look at the camera or do I look at me?" This page and the title of the book highlight the importance of how we focus our attention when we produce and reflect on images of ourselves. Insofar as a photograph is an object that instantaneously becomes a relic, the page also invites us to think deliberately about how we connect our present selves to our deeper histories. Indeed, written more than thirty years after the first introduction of this character, Is This How You See Me? joins other recent works by Hernandez such as God and Science (2012), his much-celebrated Love Bunglers (2014), and "La Maggie La Loca" (2006–7) to form a profound reflection on the adjustments we make in our relationships to our pasts as we enter middle age. Fortunately, these other works, which were previously published as hardcover graphic novels, have been collected in Angels and Magpies, a smaller, inexpensive paperback edition that is convenient for classroom use or casual reading.

Figure 1.

Angels and Magpies (cover). Jaime Hernandez © 2017. Courtesy: Fantagraphics.

The opening story of Angels and Magpies, "La Maggie La Loca," was originally serialized in the New York Times. Here, the story is published at the top of pages with another narrative, "The Gold Diggers of 1969," occupying the bottom third of each page. The latter comic is drawn in a simple style, which is fitting for a story about Maggie's childhood. "The Gold Diggers of 1969" culminates with the birth of Calvin, Maggie's brother who figures prominently in Love Bunglers, but the story also provides a large picture of her early life in which Maggie slowly builds a diverse network of mother figures, including her birth mother Quina, Isabel "Izzy" Ortiz, and her wrestler aunt Vicki. Vicki's one-time wrestling partner and later rival Rena Titañon is the central figure of "La Maggie La Loca," which chronicles Maggie's visit to the former wrestler and revolutionary's isolated island. As we later learn after Maggie nearly drowns, the visit happens as Maggie turns forty and provides an opportunity for her to measure feelings of failure against the apparent success of Rena. Although this reunion could have produced a crisis, Maggie realizes that Rena's life is "not much different than an apartment manager's life," and comes to value her connectedness over Rena's isolation. If the reunion trip provides an occasion for assessing the past, the page architecture that combines a story from Maggie's present with one from her childhood asks us to also think about which aspects of the past become necessary for understanding ourselves in the present.

In Love Bunglers, Ray Dominguez, Maggie's on-again-off-again love interest, remarks: "The signs of time passing not only showed on her face and body but on her spirit as well. Not in a bad way, more in an accepting way." But, as Maggie later makes clear, her adjustment to age is still in process. Her near death experience leaves her plagued with nightmares and "looking for clarity." As Maggie searches for clarity with those with whom she has bungled love, the narrative reveals how familial love was bungled in the past when her younger brother Calvin submitted to sexual abuse in order to protect Maggie from a predatory adolescent. This familial trauma crashes into the present when Calvin reenters Maggie's life, and, in a misguided attempt to protect her, bludgeons Ray.

The aftermath of this event leads to some of...