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My True Story
The True story of the artist Rodriguez Spain.
Full Illustrated.
It is an intense story line-if you are a fan of the artist or a fan of incredible story telling.
THIS is the book for you!
Full Illustrated.
It is an intense story line-if you are a fan of the artist or a fan of incredible story telling.
THIS is the book for you!
- GenresComics
136 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1994
1 person is currently reading
29 people want to read
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
February 22, 2025
Let me be brief with my review,
First probably 3.5 stars if I could give half star reviews but I can’t so 3 stars seems more fitting.
Second, I didn’t finish the whole book scandalous I know, but I read 70% of it getting up to page 80, before having to put the book down as I had to go to class and I was really only reading this for a class assignment.
Maybe I’ll go back and finish the last roughly 50 pages I didn’t read, but seeing as it’s anthology of various stories all written and drawn by Spain and I read a little more than halfway reading all the parts consisting of spains memories of his life in autobiography form, I still will count this as read, as it’s not like I stopped the book in the middle of a story, I read a lot of contained narratives within the comic.
I just have more comics to get through reading so I don’t want to slog down my inspiration to read by coming back to this rn.
So I’ll review it.
Why three stars is it really so bad?
No. If we were just ranking this on the art alone it might even get an easy five stars.
Unfortunately as we all know comics are half art half story, and to me the stories in this comic read much more like aesthetic snapshots of his life retold through the rose colored, or black and white colored lens if you will of comics, than they do as actual stories. No plot really has an overarching conflict, a goal to overcome. The stories perhaps intentionally so, seem much more interested in just retelling events both from spains life and from history, that happened then they are at creating conflict and structuring the plot like a story that builds and sets up conflict. This is good to create realism but does little to create a full on story. There is conflict but it’s very passive, it feels more like our main character happens to be commenting on conflicts going on around him, then he is writing how they effect him, or his goals in overcoming them.
And no, we can’t simply say “but it’s a narrative about spains life, an autobiography it’s meant to just be a retelling as it happened and as he wants to tell it.”
Maybe so, he certainly has a right to tell his own story however he wants, but I argue even most autobio comics do at least set up a central conflict in the narrators life and explore that, giving us a story with a goal and characters to root for to sink our teeth into. This one didn’t really have a set narrative goal beyond “stories about the past and destruction.” Which is a theme not a narrative goal. The end result feels less like a comic wanting to tell a concrete story and more a comic evoking the feeling of when you recall a hazy memory in your life that is now has a hazy fuzzy Pinterest asethetic filter put on it because man wasn’t everything better in the past. But then, oh yeah in the past everyone was more bigoted so when we examine the past through history and not our own life experiences maybe we shouldn’t glorify it.
I’m simplifying greatly but you get my point.
I think my point is no further illustrated then the fact the art is so detailed at many points we loose Spain, or I personally did. I couldn’t tell which character was meant to be Spain at all until my prof pointed it out, because the narrative simply does not set up any story with Spain as our main character, he just kinda brings you into his brain of memories and slightly organizes them through narrative interspersed throughout.
The end result is a well drawn comic everyone should reference for the art alone, and even a comic with dialogue that feels very realistic, but it sacrifices story for realism, and while it might be more realistic to give us fragments as in real life people talk in fragments and don’t plan and plot out their life like a story for a book, when push comes to shove 100% realism and no literary filtering is going to result in not enough piecing the stories together so the audience can grasp story out of lived experiences. We in real life live in snapshots of events, but stories do not tell snapshots they tell structured plot which this in many ways lacked.
Ok, this review is lackluster like the narrative of the book, so I’m calling a close on my review.
Art - 5 stars
Narrative writing and structor to tell a full plot - 2.5
Aesthetic writing - 3.5
First probably 3.5 stars if I could give half star reviews but I can’t so 3 stars seems more fitting.
Second, I didn’t finish the whole book scandalous I know, but I read 70% of it getting up to page 80, before having to put the book down as I had to go to class and I was really only reading this for a class assignment.
Maybe I’ll go back and finish the last roughly 50 pages I didn’t read, but seeing as it’s anthology of various stories all written and drawn by Spain and I read a little more than halfway reading all the parts consisting of spains memories of his life in autobiography form, I still will count this as read, as it’s not like I stopped the book in the middle of a story, I read a lot of contained narratives within the comic.
I just have more comics to get through reading so I don’t want to slog down my inspiration to read by coming back to this rn.
So I’ll review it.
Why three stars is it really so bad?
No. If we were just ranking this on the art alone it might even get an easy five stars.
Unfortunately as we all know comics are half art half story, and to me the stories in this comic read much more like aesthetic snapshots of his life retold through the rose colored, or black and white colored lens if you will of comics, than they do as actual stories. No plot really has an overarching conflict, a goal to overcome. The stories perhaps intentionally so, seem much more interested in just retelling events both from spains life and from history, that happened then they are at creating conflict and structuring the plot like a story that builds and sets up conflict. This is good to create realism but does little to create a full on story. There is conflict but it’s very passive, it feels more like our main character happens to be commenting on conflicts going on around him, then he is writing how they effect him, or his goals in overcoming them.
And no, we can’t simply say “but it’s a narrative about spains life, an autobiography it’s meant to just be a retelling as it happened and as he wants to tell it.”
Maybe so, he certainly has a right to tell his own story however he wants, but I argue even most autobio comics do at least set up a central conflict in the narrators life and explore that, giving us a story with a goal and characters to root for to sink our teeth into. This one didn’t really have a set narrative goal beyond “stories about the past and destruction.” Which is a theme not a narrative goal. The end result feels less like a comic wanting to tell a concrete story and more a comic evoking the feeling of when you recall a hazy memory in your life that is now has a hazy fuzzy Pinterest asethetic filter put on it because man wasn’t everything better in the past. But then, oh yeah in the past everyone was more bigoted so when we examine the past through history and not our own life experiences maybe we shouldn’t glorify it.
I’m simplifying greatly but you get my point.
I think my point is no further illustrated then the fact the art is so detailed at many points we loose Spain, or I personally did. I couldn’t tell which character was meant to be Spain at all until my prof pointed it out, because the narrative simply does not set up any story with Spain as our main character, he just kinda brings you into his brain of memories and slightly organizes them through narrative interspersed throughout.
The end result is a well drawn comic everyone should reference for the art alone, and even a comic with dialogue that feels very realistic, but it sacrifices story for realism, and while it might be more realistic to give us fragments as in real life people talk in fragments and don’t plan and plot out their life like a story for a book, when push comes to shove 100% realism and no literary filtering is going to result in not enough piecing the stories together so the audience can grasp story out of lived experiences. We in real life live in snapshots of events, but stories do not tell snapshots they tell structured plot which this in many ways lacked.
Ok, this review is lackluster like the narrative of the book, so I’m calling a close on my review.
Art - 5 stars
Narrative writing and structor to tell a full plot - 2.5
Aesthetic writing - 3.5
Displaying 1 of 1 review