bow down to the cheech wizard

As someone who went to design school, I’m a little ashamed to admit that I had never heard of Vaughn Bode ’til about an hour ago. From his birth in 1941 to his untimely death only 34 years later, Bode was part of the spearhead of the underground comic, avant garde graphic design and graffiti community.

His most famous work is The Cheech Wizard, a subversive little prat in a hat – actually, he’s all hat – who gets up to no good with even worse language all day long, aided by his lizard sidekick. I have no idea what the guy’s name is, but i feel for him. Dude keeps getting kicked in the gonads. The Cheech Wizard not only pushed the agenda of subversive sequential art, it also inspired a whole generation of graffiti artists who incorporated his fluid character designs onto their train car bombings.

Props go out to my man Koncept83 of the KLG Sqwad for linking me up to the Vaughn Bode Website. If you want to know more about the man and his bizarre body of work, check out Bode’s Wikipedia entry.