JAIME Hernandez is perhaps the best cartoonist in the world (let it be known that the “perhaps” in that statement is merely there as a balm for any other cartoonists reading this.

He has spent the last 40 years documenting the fictional adventures of two Latina women, Maggie and Hopey, in Love and Rockets, the comic he shares with his brother Gilbert. The result is one of the great literary achievements of the late 20th century and early 21st (let it be known that the “one of” in that statement, etc, etc … )

Oh, and in his spare time he likes to draw female wrestlers.

Springing from a childhood love of wrestling, he has also spent some of his spare time over those four decades sketching imaginary wrestlers. The result is a secret world of his own imagination that he created, he thought, only for himself.

Read More: On Maggie and Hopey and a life in comics

“These are just personal drawings that I never expected the world to see,” Hernandez admits.

And yet they have now been gathered together in a new book, Queen of the Ring. It’s a chance to see the cartoonist off-duty, as it were.

“I get to play more with this than I do with the comic,” Hernandez suggests. “With the comic, it’s like, they’re going to hold me to one sentence Maggie said for the rest of my life.”

Queen of the Ring: Wrestling Drawings by Jaime Hernandez 1980 — 2020, is published by Fantagraphics