Bodē, Vaughn
Entry updated 27 January 2025. Tagged: Artist, Author, Comics, Fan.
(1941-1975) US Comics artist and author with a bold, loose line who created a world of charming and whimsical – if somewhat cutesy – fantasy characters; the most famous of these were Cheech Wizard – a strange figure almost entirely engulfed in a star-spangled hat – a bevy of little busty sexpots and a number of almost indistinguishable reptilian characters. Bodē began by providing amateur material for Fanzines, and in 1969 won a Hugo for Best Fan Artist. From 1970 until his premature death he worked professionally for Cavalier, Métal Hurlant and National Lampoon, and published his own comic book, Junkwaffel (1972-1974), creating a number of oddball joke strips and short stories, plus a few longer ones. He won a Yellow Kid Award in 1975. The artist's birth surname was Bode but he added the macron or "long mark" (often depicted as an acute accent) to emphasize that the name has two syllables, the second being a long E.
From 1967 onward Bodē produced 14 covers for sf magazines such as Amazing, If and Galaxy, plus a few for paperback books, the first of these being R A Lafferty's Space Chantey (1968 dos). Further sf creations included the strips Sunpot (February-June 1970 Galaxy; graph 1971) – reprinted in Heavy Metal April-July 1977 – Zooks! (graph 1973) and the Post-Holocaust "Cobalt-60". Bodē published an initial 10pp segment of the latter in the US Fanzine Shangri L'Affaires #73 (June 1968), with an illustrated prose continuation in the next issue, and abandoned it. The tale was continued after Bodē's death, rather poorly, by his artist son Mark Bodē using a storyboard by Larry Todd: the result was Cobalt-60 (December 1984-August 1985 Epic Illustrated; graph 1988). Additional 1990s episodes appeared in Heavy Metal. [RT/DRL]
see also: Will Eisner Award Hall of Fame.
Vaughn Frederick Bode
born Utica, New York: 22 July 1941
died San Francisco, California: 18 July 1975
works
- The Machines (self-published, 1967) [chap: graph: pb/Vaughn Bodē]
- Cheech Wizard (self-published, 1967) [chap: graph: pb/Vaughn Bodē]
- Deadbone Erotica (New York: Bantam, 1971) [coll: graph: pb/Vaughn Bodē]
- Sunpot (New York: Stellar Productions, 1971) [coll: chap: graph: first appeared February-June 1970 Galaxy: pb/Vaughn Bodē]
- Zooks! Big Comic Strip Book about the First Lizard in Orbit (Cambridge, Massachusetts: TKII, 1973) [chap: graph: TKII was Bodē's own publishing imprint: pb/Vaughn Bodē]
- Cobalt-60 (Norfolk, Virginia: The Donning Company/Starblaze, 1988) with Mark Bodē and Larry Todd [chap: graph: first instalment June 1968 Shangri L'Affaires #73; reprinted with continuation, December 1984-August 1985 Epic Illustrated: pb/Mark Bodē]
- Vaughn Bodē's Poem Toons (Northampton, Massachusetts: Tundra Publishing, 1993) [graph: with prose tributes from others: illus/pb/Vaughn Bodē]
- Cheech Wizard's Book of Me (Seattle, Washington: Fantagraphics Books, 2015) with Mark Bode [graph: hb/Vaughn Bodē]
nonfiction
- Vaughn Bodē Index (place not known: C W Brooks Jr, 1976) with George W Beahm [chap: pb/]
links
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