Vaughn Bodē – {1941-1975}

Every graff head owes something to vaughn bode. He is one of the guys I owe my interest in indie comics and illsutration in general. Check out the wiki biography below and these great videos. ENJOY!

Vaughn Bode (/bode/; July 22, 1941 – July 18, 1975) was an artist involved in underground comics and graphic design. He is perhaps best known for his comic strip character Cheech Wizard and artwork depicting voluptuous women. He was inducted into the Will Eisner Award Hall of Fame for comics artists in 2006.

In the mid 1960s Bode was living in Syracuse, New York, attending classes at Syracuse University and contributing to The Sword of Damocles, a student-run, though not university-sanctioned, humor magazine similar to The Harvard Lampoon. In 1968, he moved to Manhattan and joined the staff of the underground newspaper the East Village Other. It was here that Bodē met Spain Rodriguez, Robert Crumb and other founders of the quickly expanding underground comics world. At EVO, he introduced Gothic Blimp Works, a comics supplement to the magazine, which ran for eight issues, the first two edited by Bodē.

Bode’s most famous comic creation is the character Cheech Wizard. Episodes of Cheech Wizard ran in the “Funny Pages” of National Lampoon magazine in almost every issue from 1970 to 1975.

Cheech Wizard is a wizard whose large yellow hat (decorated with black and red stars) covers his entire body except his legs and his big red feet. He is usually depicted without arms. Cheech Wizard is constantly in search of a good party, cold beer, and attractive women. It is never actually revealed what Cheech Wizard looks like under the hat, or exactly what kind of creature he is. Characters pressing the issue generally are rewarded with a swift kick to the groin by Cheech.

The post-apocalyptic science fiction action series Cobalt 60 presented an anti-hero named Cobalt 60 who wandered in a devastated post-nuclear land, seeking to avenge the murder of his parents.

Other Bode creations include Deadbone (the first testament of Cheech Wizard, the cartoon messiah), the adventures of the inhabitants of a solitary mountain a billion years in the past; and War Lizards, a look at the Vietnam War reflecting the hostile stance of the period’s counterculture. It is told with anthropomorphic reptiles instead of people.