Fantagraphics and comiXology presents the late great Spain Rodriguez and his graphic novel, Cruisin' with the Hound: The Life and Times of Fred Toote.
"They were all there, the pimps, the fags, the whores, the curious, the alcoholic, the weird of the late '50s… blues lovers, Canadian bikers, thrill seekers, junkies, insomniacs, hepcats…" So begins "Down at the Kitty Kat," one of the 20-plus never-before-collected memoirs and yarns by Spain, one of the original gang of Zap Comix provocateurs. Although he's best known for his two-fisted tales of the chopper-riding Trashman, Spain's blunt graphic style and uncompromising gift for caricature, rendered in eye-punishing slabs of black and white, work equally well for more subtle fare — such as these memoirs of his misspent youth.
For $17.99, you can read this newly-inducted Eisner Hall of Fame cartoonists' work on life, hogs, and the fifties on your world of tomorrow devices.
"Rodriguez was a kind of incorrigible rebellious type. . . when abstract expressionism with its two-dimensionality principle was dogma—he was into three-dimensionality, in spades—and his blue-collar employment in Buffalo area manufactories, where the curriculum was the much more interesting subject to him of simmering socioeconomic class warfare." -Jack Foran, ArtVoice
"Spain Rodriguez is one of the legends of the original underground comics wave, and he tells his own origin story in Cruisin’ with the Hound: The Life and Times of Fred Tooté, a collection of short stories about coming of age in Buffalo in the ’50s and ’60s. …Cruisin’ with the Hound… gives a real flavor both of Rodriguez’s work — which was so different in its point of view than the other underground comics of the late ’60s and early ’70s — and from whence it came." – Noel Murray, The A.V. Club