The Autobiographical Comics of Spain Rodriguez (1974-2012)
REVIEW BY ROBERT BOYD:
Spain's early autobiographical comics were macho blustery tales of his motorcycle gang, the Road Vultures. The subject matter alone strongly differentiated Spain from his wimpier colleagues, but what really stood out was Spain's approach to autobiography. While people like Robert Crumb, Aline Kominsky and Justin Green were doing cathartic, confessional autobiographical comics, Spain was hardly present in his own stories. Spain's Road Vulture stories, most of which are collected in the book My True Story, are composite portraits of a social group. Comics are particularly well-suited to this somewhat radical form of storytelling. In one panel, you can depict a dozen different things happening at once. And Spain is famous for his incredibly dense panels showing the brawls, dances and games of the Road Vultures - dozens of figures are crammed into these remarkable group shots.
Spain continued his collective biography form in the story Chicago 1968, but over time, he became willing to narrow the focus. In an ongoing series of stories in Blab!, Spain examines his life in the '50s when his two best friends were Fred Toote and Tex. The three are collectively known as the "North Fillmore Intelligentsia". They'e all bored young men out to have fun, each with a burden of sorts - Tex's growth was stunted by a deformed back, Toote is on the verge of completely losing it at any moment, and Spain - Spain's got a vulnerable heart.
Spain's easily wounded romantic nature is shown in his finest story Down at the Kitty Kat. Here Spain perfectly balances the group portrait approach of his earlier stories with the more personal approach seen in the other North Fillmore Intelligentsia stories. The Kitty Kat is where "the pimps, the fags, the whores, the curious, the alcoholic... the blues lovers, Canadian bikers, thrill seekers, junkies, insomniacs, [and] hepcats" would congregate. The North Fillmore Intelligentsia is there and Spain is nursing a broken heart. But the story doesn't linger on that - there are a lot of other interesting things happening at the Kitty Kat, and Spain the author is as interested in them as he is in dwelling on his younger self's dejection.
Spain is able to pull off these group portraits because even when showing a crowd, he shows individuals. Each character, no matter how minor, has a distinctive face, and Spain's ear for dialect helps even further to differentiate the various characters. But for an artist with such a reputation as a tough guy, Spain's greatest achievement is his moving, even tender depictions of the North Fillmore Intelligentsia.
ART SPIEGELMAN:
(from 'Spain Rodriguez: Tributes' at TCJ.com, 2012) Looking through decades of his work over the last few days, I realized that I’d sometimes get lost following the storylines of his comics as well, tho the cadence of the drawings kept me with him, and he sure got the storytelling consistently under control over recent decades in the lifelong and relentless pursuit of his craft. His drawing always reminded me of rock-solid carpentry built out of rough-hewn lumber. Despite his serious chops and his testosterone charged adventure comics influences, his art was just too quirky and filled with too much conviction to veer into the glibness that could’ve found him a comfortable home at a “mainstream” comic company. It’s what made him an underground comix star.
ROBERT CRUMB:
(from 'Spain Rodriguez: Tributes' at TCJ.com, 2012) I first met Spain in New York in the fall of 1968. He was living with Kim Deitch and doing a one-page strip for a weekly “underground” paper called The East Village Other. Kim was also doing a weekly strip for this paper. Spain had left Buffalo for good, left the world of outlaw bikers behind and embraced the East Village hippie scene, though there was a lot about the hippies that Spain didn’t like. “I ain’t no hippie,” he used to say. His allegiance to radical left-wing politics and his proletarian class identity were stronger and clearer than most of the youths in the hippie subculture, the “counter-culture,” as it was called. His politics were driven by genuine, authentic class anger, class hatred. I liked that about him. It was always clarifying, bracing, to discuss politics, social and cultural issues with him. Plus, he had a sharp sense of humor which leavened that anger. He was not your typical “humor-impaired” leftist, nor was he a dogmatic Marxist, spouting slogans or left-wing terminology. I appreciated those discussions with him, as he helped clarify certain things for me, politics, economics, history. He was well-read, self-educated in these areas.
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