Trashman (comics)

Trashman
Cover Art from The Collected Trashman Vol. 1, No. 1 (Fat City and Red Mountain Tribe, 1969). Art by Spain Rodriguez.
Publication information
Publisher	East Village Other/Rip Off Press
First appearance	East Village Other (July 1968)
Created by	Spain Rodriguez
In-story information
Alter ego	Harry Barnes
Team affiliations	Sixth International
Abilities	- Superhuman strength, stamina, speed, agility, reflexes, equilibrium and durability - "Shape shifting", ability to rearrange his molecular structure - "Random Alert Factor", a Precognitive sense which can derive warning information from random observations.

Trashman is a fictional character, a superhero who appeared regularly in underground comix and magazines between 1968 and 1985. He was created and drawn by Spain (a.k.a. Manuel) Rodriguez.

Trashman's first appearance was as a full-page serial comic strip in the New York City underground newspaper the East Village Other. After moving from New York City to San Francisco in 1970, Spain's Subvert Comics series (1970–1976) featured "three full length Trashman: Agent of the Sixth International stories."

Since 1976, Trashman has appeared in such publications as High Times, Heavy Metal, Weirdo, San Francisco magazine, Zap Comix #11-13, and the Fantagraphics anthology Zero Zero #2.

Trashman is a hero of the working classes and a champion of the radical left causes. The Trashman stories are set in a dystopian near-future America, which after having been ravaged by nuclear weapon attacks, has become a fascist police state, with "vast urban conglomerations. Social ferment [has] divided the land into a patchwork of virtually self-governing areas."

Mild mannered auto mechanic Harry Barnes turned to a life of petty crime after finding his wife murdered in their home by Gestapo-like soldiers. As Barnes flees capture by the police, a mysterious stranger in a hooded robe calling himself "Citizen X" appears and leads him down a hidden passageway to a secret underground installation. There, Barnes is told he was chosen by the mysterious and elusive "Sixth International", an underground anarcho-Marxist organization, to be trained as a master of the "para-sciences" and to use these powers to fight the oppression of the fascist governments of the world.