ABOUT THE CAST

Spain Rodriguez – was called the “socialist soul” of the 1960s underground comix movement, which revolutionized comics, making them an artistic and literary medium for adults, and paving the way for graphic novels. Spain created the first underground comix tabloid, Zodiac Mindwarp, and the first online graphic novel, the Dark Hotel. His graphic books include Nightmare Alley and Che: A Graphic Biography. Spain was also a figure in what was known as the “Chicano/Latino arts movement” of the 1970s.

Gary Groth – is the co-founder of comic book publisher Fantagraphics and The Comics Journal. The Comics Journal brought rigorous critical standards to the review of comic books and Fantagraphics is one of the major US publishers of underground and alternative comics.

R. Crumb – is the most well-known member of the underground comix movement, known for fearlessly exposing his and society’s anxieties – often about women, race and the modern world – and satirizing our pretensions. He was the founder of ZAP Comix. Recent work includes the graphic novel version of The Book of Genesis.

Ed Piskor – is a young alternative cartoonist out of Pittsburgh. Piskor got his start collaborating with underground comics pioneers Harvey Pekar and Jay Lynch. He is best known for his series, Hip Hop Family Tree and his groundbreaking X-Men: Grand Design and X-Men: Grand Design - X-Tinction

Trina Robbins – is the co-founder of Wimmen’s Comix and one of the pioneering underground cartoonists whose work debuted in The East Village Other in the late 1960s. She later become a comic book writer and leading historian on women in comics, author of The Flapper Queens: Women Cartoonists of the Jazz Age and Pretty in Ink: Women Cartoonists 1896-2013.

Susie Bright – is a feminist, author, journalist, critic, editor, publisher, producer and performer, often on the subject of sexual politics and sexuality. One of the first writers or activists to be called a “sex positive feminist,” Bright was the editor of On Our Backs, the first woman-produced lesbian sex magazine. Her Covid-year marriage was recently covered by The New York Times.

Art Spiegelman – established the graphic novel as a literary form when he won the Pulitzer Prize for Maus, his exploration of his father’s Holocaust experience. He also co- edited the comics magazines Arcade and Raw which could be said to mark, respectively, the end of the underground comics era and the beginning of alternative comics.

Spiegelman is also known for his covers for The New Yorker magazine.

Ishmael Reed – is a novelist, poet, critic, playwright, essayist, editor and publisher. Reed is a MacArthur and Guggenheim Fellow and National Book Award nominee known for his satirical, ironic take on race and literary tradition, as well as his innovative, post-modern technique. His works include: Mumbo Jumbo and The Haunting of Lin-Manuel Miranda.

Robert Williams – is one of the original ZAP Comix artists, but is best known as a painter, indeed the founder of the “Lowbrow” art movement, which combined West Coast outlaw culture – comics, movie posters, surfer and hot rod art – with surrealism – to make something completely new. He is the founder of Juxtopoz magazine.

Cynthia Rodriguez – is the author of five novels, the most recent, Carefully, published in 2020 by March House Press. She holds a master's and a doctorate in English and Comparative Literature and has published two scholarly translations of plays by the Spanish playwright Lope de Vega. She is Spain's sister.

Andi Zeisler – is a writer and co-founder of Bitch Media, “a feminist response to mainstream media and popular culture.” She is the author of the book: We Were Feminists Once.

Herb Krieger – is a retired member of the Buffalo Police Tactical Patrol Unit, which engaged with the Road Vultures Motorcycle Club in the 1960s.

Johnny Sombrero – was the Founder and Supreme Commander of the Black Diamond Riders Motorcycle Club, the legendary Toronto biker club that was affiliated with the Road Vultures Motorcycle Club, with which Spain rode.

Billy Martino – was one of the founders and leaders of the Road Vultures Motorcycle Club, with which Spain rode in the early 1960s. Martino still lives in Western New York.

Janet Underwood – was Spain’s first serious girlfriend, and was part of his early days in Buffalo, protesting the Vietnam War in 1964 and hanging out with the Road Vultures.

She has a master´s degree in special education for the deaf and hard of hearing and was a special education teacher and worked in sign language with Koko the gorilla.

Al Cooper – was one of the founders and leaders of the Road Vultures Motorcycle Club, which Spain rode with in the early 1960s.

Ken Weaver – is a singer, songwriter and musician, and was a member of The Fugs, formed in New York City in 1964. He wrote and performed two songs included in the Bad Attitude soundtrack.

Kim Deitch – is one of the original underground cartoonists whose work debuted in The East Village Other in the 1960s. His latest book, Reincarnation Stories, was named “one of the best comics of 2019” by The New York Times.

Jay Kinney – is an American author, editor, and former underground cartoonist. A member of the original Bijou Funnies crew, Kinney also edited Young Lust, a satire of romance comics and later founded the political Anarchy Comics. 

Aline Kominsky-Crumb – is one of the early underground cartoonists, and among the first women. She pioneered deeply “confessional,” darkly humorous comics, using a rough, expressive style. With Diane Noomin, she edited the Twisted Sisters anthology of women’s comics. Her books include: Love That Bunch, Need More Love, and Drawn Together, created with her husband, R. Crumb.

Maxine Weaver – is a journalist and writer now working on an autofiction series: Loved, Out There, San Francisco Redux (featuring her time dating Spain) and Back Country.

Her book, Tourism in History, was a groundbreaking history of tourism. Her translation from the French of Woman Desired, Woman Desiring, by Danièle Flaumenbaum, will be published this September by Aeon Books in London.

René Yañez – was a Chicano artist, curator and community activist. He was a founder of San Francisco´s Galería de la Raza, a non-profit gallery that features Xicanx/Latinx art and culture. He is credited with introducing the United States to the work of Frida Kahlo and the celebration of Día de los Muertos.

Yolanda López – was a Chicana feminist artist. Through mixed-media, drawings, collages, and paintings, López confronts predominant modes of Latino and Latina representations, proposing new models of gender, racial, and cultural identity. Best known for her Portrait of the Artist as the Virgin of Guadalupe, she will have a major retrospective in 2021 at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego.

Rio Yañez – is a curator, photographer, and graphic artist. Yañez is also a founding member of The Great Tortilla Conspiracy, “the world’s most dangerous tortilla art collective.” He is the son of René Yañez and Yolanda López.

Nora Rodriguez – is a museum educator and animator. She is the daughter of artist Spain Rodriguez and director Susan Stern.

Ian de Beer – is a Buffalo, New York muralist and painter who served prison time for doing graffiti.