Where In The World Is Spain Rodriguez?

I know the question you’ve been asking yourself lately: What’s Spain Rodriguez been up to since the publication of Che: A Graphic Biography?

Spain is perhaps one of the few artists to share a name with a country who is also one of the grand masters of the underground comix with his contemporaries like Robert Crumb, Skip Williamson, Gilbert Shelton and Jay Lynch. Spain is best known in those circles as the creator of Trashman and his work appeared in the East Village Other and Zap Comix back in the day when people were uptight about working for the man, baby.

This October, Spain’s illustrations will be enhancing a new book by author David Talbot called Devil Dog: The Amazing True Story of the Man Who Saved America. Published by Simon and Schuster, the book is part of their non-fiction Pulp History series of true stories of “extraordinary feats of bravery, violence, and redemption that history has forgotten.” The book also features a promotional blurb by Robert Crumb himself.

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Doc Savage, Lester Dent and Hard Case Crime

You might already know Lester Dent. He’s the creator of Doc Savage (which he wrote under the pseudonym of Kenneth Robeson). Doc was a very successful pulp hero (and later star of a line of equally successful paperback reprints of his pulp adventures). Sadly, the magical success of Doc in the pulps has never transitioned well to neither comics nor the movies.

What you may not know is that Dent also wrote a hard-boiled crime novel called Honey In His Mouth. It doesn’t star Doc Savage.

One of my favorite publishers, Hard Case Crime, publishes hard-boiled crime paperbacks. Some of them are new, but some are reissues of old classics that are worth rediscovering again. Their backlist of stuff is incredible and includes works by Lawrence Block, Richard S. Prather, David Drake, Max Allan Collins, Roger Zelazny and Donald E. Westlake. All their books feature great cover paintings that recall the classic hardboiled style of paperbacks from a couple of generations past.

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