The Girl from H.O.P.P.E.R.S.

spunky Maggie; her annoying, pixie-ish best friend and sometime lover

Hopey; and their circle of friends, including their bombshell friend

Penny Century, Maggie's weirdo mentor Izzy—as well as the aging but

still heroic wrestler Rena Titanon and Maggie's handsome love interest,

Rand Race. After the sci-fi trappings of his earliest stories (as seen

in Maggie the Mechanic, the first volume in this series),

Hernandez refined his approach, settling on the more naturalistic

environment of the fictional Los Angeles barrio, Hoppers, and the lives

of the young Mexican-Americans and punk rockers who live there. A

central story and one of Jaime's absolute peaks is "The Death of

Speedy." Such is Jaime's mastery that even though the end of the story

is telegraphed from the very title, the downhill spiral of Speedy, the

local heartthrob, is utterly compelling and ultimately quite

surprising. Also in this volume, Maggie begins her on-again off-again

romance with Ray D., leading to friction and an eventual separation

from Hopey.

(Note: A number of these stories, including a whole cycle

of wrestling stories starring or co-starring Rena Titanon, were not

collected in the hardcover Locas.)