Manuel Rodriguez, better known as Spain or Spain Rodriguez, was an American underground cartoonist who created the character Trashman.
12 Facts About Spain Rodriguez
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Strongly influenced by 1950s EC Comics illustrator Wally Wood, Spain pushed Wood's sharp, crisp black shadows and hard-edged black outlines into a more simplified, stylized direction.
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Spain Rodriguez's work extended the eroticism of Wood's female characters.
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Manuel Spain Rodriguez was born March 2,1940, in Buffalo, New York.
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Spain Rodriguez picked up the nickname Spain as a child, when he heard some kids in the neighborhood bragging about their Irish ancestry, and he defiantly claimed Spain was just as good as Ireland.
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Spain Rodriguez covered the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago as a reporter for the East Village Other, adventures which were chronicled in My True Story.
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From 1976 to 1998, Spain Rodriguez contributed cover art to more than a dozen issues of the popular pornographic magazine Screw.
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From 1998 to 1999, Spain Rodriguez drew the continuing graphic story, The Dark Hotel, which ran on the website Salon.
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Spain Rodriguez designed at least five posters for the San Francisco Mime Troupe, a political satirist theatre company.
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Spain Rodriguez taught art classes at Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts for many years, and he supported the creation of murals in the Mission District.
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Spain Rodriguez died at his home in San Francisco on November 28,2012, after battling cancer for six years.
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In July 2013, during San Diego Comic-Con, Spain Rodriguez was one of six inductees into the Will Eisner Hall of Fame.