02 September 2008

Another great one gone, circa 1975

For those of us of the right vintage, there was no cartoonist more perfect for the 70s than Vaughn Bodé, who drew (among other things) the Cheech Wizard strip for National Lampoon. Rico was in college then, and the twisted humor of the Cheech was perfect for the times. Da Cheech, as he was affectionately known, was a wizard who 'lived in his hat', being all hat and feet and nothing else but a bump and an occasional bellybutton: "The strip follows the antics of an underground comic guru and his colorful cast of frogs, lizards, and voluptuous 'broads' on the tiny planet Summermouse." If you don't like semi-stoned, sexist humor, you will not like Da Cheech. Bodé also drew a lot of other great stuff, including his single strip The Man and the on-going series Junkwaffel, which required you to imagine a planet of humanoid lizards wearing WW2 German uniforms and equipment and carrying Schmeissers and potato masher grenades.

But where else could you find a cartoon wizard threatened with being 'sent to Buddha today' by a highly trained karateka, Yellow Death, only to have him blown away by a double-barreled shotgun (that somehow a wizard with no arms is able to fire), with the wizard commenting merely "Welcome to da West, gooko."

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