Any fan of the acclaimed, longrunning comics series Love & Rockets knows that the L&R stories created by Jaime Hernandez—half of L&R's Eisner Hall of Fame creative team along with his brother Gilbert—are often filled with a wildly inventive range of characters inspired by science-fiction, kids’ comics, romance stories, and pro wrestling of all kinds. Jaime’s new book Queen of the Ring is a tribute to classic women’s wrestling: it’s a collection of retro-inspired illustrations of fictional female wrestlers from the 1960s-1970s era that Jaime loves, depicted in vividly rendered imaginary wrestling magazines from the period. The book collects 125 previously unpublished drawings by Jaime that celebrate the classic era of female pro wrestling as well as the period-hype and the over-the-top personalities of such fictional grapplers as, the beautiful and tough Bettie Rey (“Don’t Call Me Baby”), and champion wrestler Ruby Perez (“Little Miss Dynamite”). Jaime calls the drawings, “my Love and Rockets world that’s not my Love and Rockets world.” Queen of the Ring: Wrestling Drawings 1980-2020 by Jaime Hernandez will be published this month by Fantagraphics Books.
