Mark Bode Interview
Spizzyblog postet an Interview with Mark Bode. Check it out.
City, Mark Bode understood just how much influence his late father, cartoonist Vaughn Bode, had on the burgeoning graffiti art scene. Back then subway cars were traveling, metal canvases used by graffiti artists to display their talents.
“I was waiting on East 23rd (street) for a train and this (express) train went by and I saw this huge production of my father’s work go by,” Mark recalls. “It just blew my mind. I was just like, ‘Wow, somebody gave up their freedom to paint a mural based on my father’s material. Who would do that? I’ve got to meet this person’. I thought it was just one person at first, and then later when I moved back to San Francisco I realized that other writers were doing it. I saw it in the streets of San Francisco, and that’s when I knew something was up.”
When legendary cartoonist Vaughn Bode dreamed up his flagship character, Cheech Wizard, in 1957, he unwittingly created a heavy cornerstone in the evolution of graffiti art. Through classic graphic novels like “Deadbone”, “Lizard Zen” and “Bode’s Erotica”, Vaughn introduced the world to his groundbreaking, simple-yet-complex style of cartoon art. A giant yellow wizard-hat with legs, talking lizards and voluptuous, top-heavy nymphs are a few of the colorful inhabitants of the oft-imitated Bode universe. Mark Bode not only kept his father’s creations alive long after Vaughn’s passing in 1975, the son has also built a formidable legacy of his own. A renowned tattoo artist who has graced many a body with his impeccable style, Mark has also partnered with toy-designers Planet 6 to manufacture a collectable “Bode Broad” doll. Earlier this year, Puma released a limited-edition Bode sneaker and matching hoodie set decorated with the recognizable Cheech Wizard emblem; fans quickly snatched up the coveted items. Zack Snyder, director of the blockbuster flick “300″, is slated to helm the film version of Vaughn and Mark Bode’s renowned, post-apocalyptic graphic novel “Cobalt 60″. During my exclusive interview with the famous cartoonist, Mark Bode let it be known that the symbiotic style he shares with father comes easy to him.
“(Vaughn) realized at an early age that I had the want to be an artist like him,” Mark explains. “So he would teach me that his characters were real. He’d go on a walk with me and (say), ‘Cheech Wizard lives over the hill here and that’s where his hideout is’. And we would go and wait for Cheech to show up and we’d often have lunch or whatever… just sit on the hillside waiting for Cheech to show up. He’d tell other stories about Cheech while we sat there and eventually it just ingrained it into my head that all this stuff was real. Like he would show me a comic book page and then he’d take me on a walk and go, ‘This is where it happened. This is where I saw this happen’. It was really just him imagining it but he would tell me like it was a real story… like it really happened. So my reality became his at a very early age and as I get my drawing abilities together, I found it real easy to imagine in his world. So that’s how we started to share a vision. Now I find it extremely easy to fall into his world. It’s actually more comfortable there than any place else because that’s a place we share together. I can keep him alive there. When I do my own stuff I’m more brooding, more intense about it; and some of my best work is definitely my own. But whenever I’m in his world, I’m just loving life and I’m smiling so much my cheeks hurt.”
original grittier, darker version), Mark Bode has contributed his artwork to hardcore publications such as Heavy Metal, Epic, Hustler Comics and Penthouse Hot Talk. Once upon a time in America, adult cartoons such as Fritz The Cat and the classic feature-film version of Heavy Metal could be seen in theaters. Nowadays most people dismiss animated films as child’s fare. Mr. Bode frankly gave his take on why adult-oriented cartoons get the cold shoulder from movie studios.
“People are still really uptight about sex,” Mark retorts. “I don’t care how much you put it on the billboards or how you put it on TV or whatever. We’re still a really uptight civilization, as far as the country goes on a whole… there’s a lot of uptight people still out there who don’t want to see this stuff out. The big movie companies don’t see it as a profitable market to do x-rated comics (as) animated (films). This also has directly something to do with all the comic book shops that got busted over the last fifteen, twenty years. They actually had people going around doing a sting operation; where they’d send a seventeen-year old kid into a comic store, and they would tell them, ‘Go into the corner there where they say ADULTS ONLY and buy this or that comic book’. And the person would go in and buy it and then the cops would come in and arrest the comic shop owner. A lot of people ended up in jail and now they’re scared. So a lot of comic shops won’t even have an adult section. They’re still doing it down south, they’re still busting people. And this killed it for this country.”
Read the rest of the interview and view all the pictures here.
