Rodriguez, Manuel "Spain"

RODRIGUEZ, MANUEL “SPAIN” (1940-2012). The most consistent proponent of radical left politics among the cartoonists of the Underground Comix movement, Rodriguez became best known in the Bay Area for his widely-seen Mime Theater posters, his work on neighborhood murals, and his mentoring of younger radical artists.

Born and raised in Buffalo, New York, Rodriguez had a Spanish father and Italian mother, both first-generation immigrants. Taking pride in his Hispanic heritage, he gave himself the nickname “Spain” as an outsider in ethnically diverse, blue collar surroundings. Encouraging his art, Spain’s mother played a crucial role in his development.

Something of a juvenile delinquent during high school, Rodriguez joined a Buffalo area motorcycle club, an experience that he would later chronicle in memorable semi-autobiographical comic stories marked with a gritty candor. He worked at a Western Electric cable plant for five years as a janitor, a job that he would later cite as raising his political consciousness, offering him an experience in class struggle and an early inclination toward some variety of socialism.

Born with a natural talent for drawing, he had been attracted to cartooning through a youthful immersion in comic books. EC Comics, showcasing many of the top artists of the Golden Age illustrating Crime, Horror, War, Science Fiction, and Humor comics, offered a sophisticated and adult version of what comic art could achieve. Outraged by Congressional Hearings on comics that brought EC’s publisher William Gaines and others before the Kefauver Committee to justify their violent art and storylines, Rodriguez developed a lifelong hostility toward artistic repression. He also considered himself in some ways a disciple of one of the greatest of EC artists, the hard-driving, doomed bohemian, Wallace Wood.

Moving to Manhattan’s Lower East Side in 1966, Rodriguez found a home for his emerging comic art in the pages of the East Village Other (EVO), one of the first and most influential underground newspapers. From 1966 through 1969, along with Kim Deitch and Trina Robbins, he was an EVO regular. His “Trashman, Agent of the 6th International” and his “Manning,” the saga of about a corrupt and brutal Manhattan cop, met immediate the approval of a young and rebellious readership. Meanwhile, the underground press boomed in many parts of the United States.

Thanks to the Underground Press Syndicate policy of member newspapers reprinting each other’s articles and art, “Trashman” achieved widespread distribution. His imagined tales of a radical and often violent street-fighter in a dystopian future North America captured the increasingly hardened radical sentiment that epitomized and itself contributed to the hyper-revolutionary mood widely felt at the end of the 1960s.

Like most of the artists associated with the underground press, Rodriguez moved to the Bay Area in 1970. There, the Underground Comix Movement coalesced as a vehicle for bold and uncensored comic books. Even as the counterculture and the underground press proceeded to unravel, these comics found a niche and for a time sustained a readership of several hundred thousand. Among the early artists of Zap Comix, he remained among its contributors through its long and influential run.

An avowed Marxist, Spain continued to support left community organizations such as the San Francisco Mime Troupe, for whom he helped design sets as well as create striking poster art. One of the core contributors to the series titled Anarchy Comics, he distinguished himself drawing concise historical strips about the Spanish Civil War and other outcroppings of anarchist and radical history. With his marriage to Susan Stern and the birth of a daughter, a certain shift of his work could be seen: more feminist heroes and a more gender-equal vision of social transformation.

Among his handful of solo books, Che (2010) reached audiences around the world with more than a dozen editions. Meanwhile, he excelled in the illustration of radical texts including Devil Dog (2010), Farmworker Comix (2014) and Dires Irae: One Man Against the American Empire (2003, 2018).

Buhle, Paul, “Spain Rodriguez (1940-2011),” Dissent digital Dec.3, 2012.

Rosenkranz, Patrick. Rebel Visions The Underground Comix Revolution, 1962-1975. Seattle: Fantagraphics, 2002.

Rosenkranz, Patrick. ‘Spain Rodriguez Fought the Good Fight.’ The Comics Journal. November 29, 2012. http://www.tcj.com/spain-rodriguez-fought-the-good-fight/

Bad Attitude: The Art of Spain Rodriguez, produced and directed by Susan Stern, 2021.