Bodé, Vaughn
Entry updated 12 September 2022. 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. Bodé 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.
From 1967 onward Bodé 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. Bodé published an initial 10pp segment of the latter in the US Fanzine Shangri L'Affaires #73 (1968), with an illustrated prose continuation in the next issue, and abandoned it. The tale was continued after Bodé's death, rather poorly, by his artist son Mark Bodé 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]
Vaughn Frederick Bodé
born Utica, New York: 22 July 1941
died San Francisco, California: 18 July 1975
works
- Deadbone Erotica (New York: Bantam, 1971) [coll: graph: pb/Vaughn Bodé]
- Sunpot (New York: Stellar Productions, 1971) [coll: chap: graph: first appeared February-June 1970 Galaxy: pb/Vaughn Bodé]
- Zooks! Big Comic Strip Book about the First Lizard in Orbit (Cambridge, Massachusetts: TKII, 1973) [chap: graph: TKII was Bodé's own publishing imprint: pb/Vaughn Bodé]
- Cobalt-60 (Norfolk, Virginia: The Donning Company/Starblaze, 1988) with Mark Bodé and Larry Todd [chap: graph: first instalment 1968 Shangri L'Affaires #73; reprinted with continuation, December 1984-August 1985 Epic Illustrated: pb/Mark Bodé]
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