Spain Rodriguez (1940–2012)

Manuel "Spain" Rodriguez (b. 1940, Buffalo, New York) is an American underground cartoonist best known for his character Trashman. His experiences on the road with the biker gang, the Road Vultures, provided inspiration for his work, as did his left-wing politics. Rodriguez studied at the Silvermine Guild Art School. In New York during the late 1960s, he became a contributor to the East Village Other, which published his own comics tabloid, Zodiac Mindwarp (1968). A founder of the United Cartoon Workers of America, he contributed to numerous underground comics and also drew Salon's continuing graphic story, The Dark Hotel. Strongly influenced by 1950s EC comic book illustrator Wally Wood, Spain pushed Woods’ sharp, crisp black shadows and hard-edged black outlines into a more simplified, stylized direction. His work also extended the eroticism of Woods’ female characters. In such classics as “Mean Bitch Thrills,” Spain’s ladies were raunchy, explicitly sexual, and often incorporated macho sadomasochistic themes. His most recent (2008) work is an illustrated biography of Ernesto "Che" Guevara, entitled Che: A Graphic Biography.