Measles Outbreak

“It’s sort of a modernized Josie and the Pussycats meets the Spice Girls,” Gilbert Hernandez says by way of describing “Yeah,” his forthcoming comic book for kids. “It’s about an all-girl rock band who are famous in outer space, but on Earth nobody’s heard of them.”

That’s a switch.

Hernandez is a don in the underworld of alternative comics, best known for his 14-year run on the racy “Love and Rockets” series he created in 1981 with brothers Jaime and Mario. His stories explored his Latin American roots through a blend of magic realism and grittiness. His women were unabashedly sexual, their splendors lovingly rendered in lush black line work.

So this recent foray into kiddie-land required a strong self-editor. For “The New Adventures of Venus,” a story line separate from “Yeah,” Hernandez had to retool the family of his precocious 11-year-old heroine, who had appeared in “Rockets.” “Two of the characters--Venus’ mother and aunt--are very sexy women,” he says. “I had to tone them down, make them less obvious. So now they just hang out in the house wearing a sweater or a T-shirt.”

Though he still produces adult-oriented material in his Oxnard studio, the kids stuff dominates. “Yeah,” a collaboration with cartoonist Peter Bagge, is scheduled for an August release by DC Comics. And “Venus” appears in “Measles,” a quarterly children’s anthology.

It’s high time. Now 42, Hernandez recalls a boyhood spent poring over a variety of the good stuff: four-color funny books with heart, from Little Lulu and Donald Duck to EC Comics and Mad magazine. Yet the comics industry is in such a slump nowadays that most publishers have restricted their output to steroid-charged superhero and horror titles catering mostly to longtime collectors. The medium faces an uncertain future as young readers lose interest.

How does a cartoonist with no children get inside their heads? “I watch a little bit of the Cartoon Network, shows like the ‘Powerpuff Girls,’ ” Hernandez says. “Or I go to the mall with my wife and listen to what little girls are saying. Maybe that’s why I do this: I have no children, so I create my own.”