Eventually, their enthusiasm for the medium led the youngsters to begin writing and drawing comics themselves for fun, collaborating with one another and sharing their own individual creations.
As they grew older, Mario discovered girls and mostly abandoned his drawing hobby, but Jaime and Gilbert remained committed and prolific, accumulating hundreds of pages of increasingly sophisticated and personal work.
In 1982 Mario instigated and self-published a black and white comic book of his and his brothers' work, the original version of Love and Rockets No.
This project was based upon a character created by artist Dean Motter, and had already been in development for some time when the Hernandez brothers became involved; the book had been heavily publicized in the comics press as a forthcoming title slated to be drawn by Paul Rivoche, who completed a substantial amount of conceptual design artwork but ultimately did not contribute any actual comics pages to the project as published.
Eventually, Mario all but completely stopped contributing to the comic, usually writing and drawing a short story every few years for anniversary issues.