Artists I Like: Larry Todd

This week's Artist I Like is Larry Todd, one of the lesser-celebrated cartoonists of the 60s and 70s underground comix movement. He was a New York guy who was pals with Vaughn Bodé and the two collaborated on science fiction and comic covers that are absolutely amazing.

I confess I haven't read many Todd comics. He's best know for Dr. Atomic, which seems to be in the post smokin' wheelhouse of the comix movement. All those guys liked to do was draw drug using hippies and naked ladies.

I don't know how to explain my attraction to this style. But Bodé and Todd both simply charm the socks right off of me. There's a cartoon vibe to them both, mixed with a fantastical aesthetic and it's just perfect.

Larry Todd died less than a year ago in Sept 2024. And that makes me very sad. The idea that I could *possibly* have found a way to contact him and I didn't... well, honestly, that's just how I roll. I never reach out to "famous" artists I admire because I assume they don't want to talk to a schmuck like me. Anyway, RIP Larry Todd.

Todd + Bodé

This image inspired my whole ZSF idea, honestly.

This is my fave.

 

Bodé's Sunpot Fanart

In 1977 Heavy Metal Magazine launched. It was the American version of the French Metal Hurlant. And it included a Vaughn Bodé comic called Sunpot, which was about a spaceship with pot leaves on it.

Here's a little fanart of the Sunpot, for fun.

Brush pens, Posca markers, alcohol markers. Some bits bled black into gray. I find that the tools I use don't bleed much but when they do they really do. Hard to predict it. The only way to fully avoid it is to let the shit sit and dry for hours. But I tend to go from inks to colors within a few minutes, which is why I prefer using ink that dries fast and is water resistant.

But alcohol markers are not water and they behave a little differently.

Here's the original page by Vaughn Bodé that inspired me to doodle this. BTW, even though Bodé has an accented "e", Mark Bodé (Vaughn's son) says it is pronounced "BOH-dee"... which is how I have always pronounced it anyway so that's cool.

 

Artists I Like: Vaughn Bodé

Another great artist who has had a profound influence on me is Vaughn Bodé*. Many of you will be saying "Duh" right now.

I have went through a few different broad artistic phases in my life. One of them, perhaps the most profound, to be honest, was during my 30s (I turned 30 in 2000). It was not until around 2001 that I first got my dirty hands on any Vaughn Bodé books. His style and influence had already seeped into my work via other routes, most notably the 1977 Ralph Bakshi film Wizards. Now, the history of that movie is that Bodé and Bakshi were working together on it and Bakshi for damn sure took a shit load of Bodé's style and work directly into the film. But Vaughn died in 1975 and thus was unable to continue that work. There is a lot more to that whole story, including a lot of bad vibes between Bakshi and Vaughn's son Mark, but that's a story for another time.

The point is I didn't have direct experience with the artist's work until I was in my 30s and it was about that time that I hit a mini mid-life crisis of identity. And, consequently, my entire artistic approach was reborn. I found my voice. And the work of Vaughn Bodé was instrumental in making that happen.

Bodé was one of the names in the 60s/70s underground comix movement, though he wasn't part of the whole San Francisco scene. He was editor of the East Village Other for a time, which was an arty tabloid, a kind of underground answer to the Village Voice, I think.

He was prolific as absolute fuck. I mean seriously. The man died at age 34 and left behind countless comic book pages, stories, tons of book covers and interior illustrations, and inspired the modern grafiti movement. By age 34 I had barely found my own artistic voice.

What drew me into Bodé's work was the immediacy of his forms and lines, and the utter lack of filter. His comics, such as Deadbone Erotica and Cheech Wizard, had zero fucks to give when it came to being polite or decent. Tits, ass, and dicks were frequently drawn. Hell, just look at one of his little lizard guys... they all have a little dick bump. It's super fun. But also... satirical and scathing. Some of Bodé's pieces are so extreme they are very hard to look at today, not only bordering on "is this OK??" but crossing over into "I'm pretty sure this is not OK"**. But he was clearly trying to make a point, not just being an edge lord. From commentary against war and capitalism, to commentary against racism and sexism... he was saying a lot.

Vaughn described himself as bisexual, pansexual, omnisexual, transvestite, transsexual, gay, hetero, and all of the above. He clearly did not want to be put into a box. 

*BTW, you can type "Bodé" with the accented "e" by using Alt+0233 on your standard keyboard. Maybe on a Mac it's like Macbutton+0233. I don't know Macs.

**For example, some of the Deadbone strips feature strongly racist caricatures of Asians. Also, many of the strips feature women being murdered and otherwise assaulted. Though, to be fair, it's still within that context of "making some kind of social commentary point". Sometimes I get it, other times I don't get it. But this is the complex and difficult relationship we have to have with complex and difficult material. It's not cut and dry. The creator is not a shining beacon of purity, he's a troubled, clouded, brilliant, beautiful human being whose work shocks, amazes, and fills one with wonder. And sometimes cringe.

Page from the original Cobalt 60. Drawn on typing paper, I believe.

Collab with Larry Todd.

Cheech being himself.

Dangerous Idolatry

I enjoy discovering new artists and being amazed by what they can do. The internet has been a magnificent blessing for the arts as more and more folks are practicing and sharing their work. In the old days, you'd find new artists by reading comics and browsing the bookshelves and magazines. Today you can find ten new ones a day and get bored before you run out.

Sean Aaberg amazes me.

The ones that impress me the most often have copious amounts of work, including a seemingly endless series of sketchbooks in addition to their finished works. And I'm always blown away by that because that ain't me. I'm the artist over here with just a handful of sketchbooks, most of which are not full.

Erol Otus mesmerizes me.

Part of this is because I don't believe I'm obsessed with drawing. I love to draw, and I think about drawing nearly all the time. But I don't actually do it as much as I would like. Another part of the reason is that between 2009 and 2023, with maybe a year offset somewhere in the middle, I drew almost exclusively digitally. So I don't have physical drawings lying around from that period. I have thousands of PSD and TIF files*.

Raven Perez blows my mind.

But that's an aside, really. The point of this post is to talk about why envy is a potentially toxic shitty thing to do to yourself.

Brian Baugh makes me happy.

To be clear: it is good to look at the art of others, marvel at it, love it, and even express the very human "man, I wish I could do that!". This is not the problem, as long as you don't let it become one. That feeling turns dark when you look at their work and compare it to your work, looking for all the ways in which you are not as good as them.

Don't do this.

Evlyn Moreau enchants me.

It isn't helpful to anyone, most of all to yourself. You are not them. The strokes you make are yours. The drawings you draw are yours. You can never do what they do because you are not them.

Bud Root gives me funny feelings.

Also, they are not a representation of perfection. I don't care if their art is the most beautiful you've ever seen and it makes you cry and they have thousands of beautiful pieces and other thousands of pages of sketches. They are not you, you are not them. And you can only be you.

Joe Vaux kickstarts my imagination.

It sounds stupid to say it. Like a "duh" kind of moment. But you gotta realize how urgently true it is. You are an embodied individual tied inextricably to your own personal history and your own personal future, which has yet to be written. Focus on what you do. Look at their work, enjoy it, learn from, take from it what you feel will help you grow and feel more robust. But never do the math on who is better. That way leads only to dread and self-loathing.

Matthew Allison makes me want to get better.

*Honestly, to satisfy my lust for printed material, I am considering doing a "digital sketchbook series" where I collect tons of those drawings into a few print books. I think that could be super fun. 

Vaughn Bodé sings to my spirit.

A Bit of Bodé

Just some pics of Vaughn Bodé stuff I picked up recently. I have most of these comics in various collections, but I never owned the originals.

Junkwaffel #1, 1971

The Man, 1972

Miami Mice (Mark Bodé), 1985

Cheech Wizard's Book of Me

My wife picked this up for me for $4 using some kind of voodoo magic coupon. I love me some Bodé and this is a book I hadn't seen before. I'm not the kind of guy who obsesses over collecting everything an artist creates but I'm always giddy when I pick up something new.

This book is assembled by Vaughn's son Mark Bodé and I feel like he did a fantastic job. Lots of very old doodles and sketchbook pages are included. Maybe these appeared somewhere else before and I just didn't see it. But there's a lot of stuff in here I've never seen before. I guess this is also because my experience with Bodé is almost exclusively the Deadbone Erotica stuff. I own very little Cheech Wizard material.

Barely got into this so far but it's just chock full of explosive cartooning!

The Big Book of Bodé Tattoos

 My wife got me this for the ole birthday and I love it.

This is a fat ass 400 page hardback of Mark Bodé's tattoo flash art. So you're gonna see a lot of Da Bodé babes, Cheech Wizard, lizards, as well a lot of more typical tattoo art such as butterflies and skulls.

If you like Bodé, you'll fucking love this.

So, for personal context, a lot of people compare my art to Bodé. I am a huge fan. But honestly I didn't discover Vaughn or Mark's work until I was 30 years old. And yes, you can certainly see a shift in how I draw before this and after it. I turned 30 in 2000 and it was around 2002-2003 that my cartoon art style really started to gel. Before that I was a stiffer, more boring artist, I believe. Hell, I'm not even sure how I drew shit in the 90s.

But let's peel it back a little more because Bodé's style had an impact on me BEFORE that time. How? Because Vaughn's work had already infiltrated pop culture, which infiltrated me. I watched Ralph Bakshi's Wizards when I was about 17. I watched Fire and Ice around that time, and Heavy Metal. I had issues of Heavy Metal. I owned Richard Corben comics. I was into Mike Ploog and Frank Frazetta. Vaughn Bodé is a large figure in that same lineage, though I wasn't able to land on him until a decade later. His influence was in me via Wizards, which of course was immensely influenced by Bodé.

We artists don't like being compared to other artists too closely. It feels weird. I don't "draw like Vaughn Bodé", I draw like J.V. West. And J.V. West was inspired by Bodé, Frazetta, Corben, and Willingham like a bomb.

Today when people say my work reminds them of Vaughn Bodé I am humbled. I can't think of a better compliment, to be honest.

Vaughn Bode

What can I say about Vaughn Bode that I haven't already said ten times? He was a legend. He was a shooting star. he came along, did amazing shit we're still talking about, and died very young. He was a visionary, an iconic creator, and a damn weirdo. I love him.

I didn't actually discover Bode until I was in my 30s... probably older than he was when he died. I had picked up his vibes as early as 1981 or 1982 through the osmosis of art as other creators such as filmmaker Ralph Bakshi filtered his work into theirs. But there was no Bode for young JV to be had. I didn't know it, I didn't see it, I couldn't have found it in my circumstances. Not until much much later.

In the 2000s I was going through some serious changes, which included an absolute rebirth of myself as an artist. So finding Bode's work at that time definitely left a huge impact on that rebirth. Some of his spirit definitely was folded into the mix that was to be James West 2.0. And I'm glad for it.

B/X Bode: The Lizz Character Class

©I'm firing up a new B/X D&D campaign and I decided all the classes needed to be unique. No standard races or classes allowed. One of the classes the dripped out of my brain late last night was this. If you know da Bode, then this will make sense.

PDF is here.

LIZZ

You are a righteous one. You da boss.

RESTRICTIONS

Your Prime Requisite is spunk, but that don’t matter. You got all the juice. You fight like a Thief. You can use little bitty weapons like daggers, short swords, and little bows. You can wear armor what was made or modified to fit ya, but you ain’t no good at it and when you gets hit with a 20 or you rolls a 1 it falls off. You gots a 3 in 6 shot at makin’ any magic doohickie do its thing but if ya rolls a 6 something real bad gonna go down.

SPECIAL ABILITIES

Lizard Luck: Sometimes da crazy universe has a heart an’ smiles luck down on ya like sweet rain. If things go south, you can petition the big ole ‘verse howevers ya like and if ya makes yer savin’ throw vs. spells somethin’ real good gonna go down. ‘Course… if ya was ta fail dat save real bad… well, you might get tossed about like a piece of cabbage.

Honey Magnet: You is not only da boss o’ adventure, you is da boss o’ the ladies. When you see a dew eyed sweetmeat of a mountain cantelope (a female, or whatever), you gotta save vs. spells or be compelled ta woo her wit witty words and witticism stuff. Roll a d20. If you happen ta gets a 20 she’s all into ya like a charm person done happened. Otherwise, who knows?

Naturally, this is a fan-fic post and the art and original characters are (c) copyright Bode.

B/X Bode: The Lizz Character Class

©I'm firing up a new B/X D&D campaign and I decided all the classes needed to be unique. No standard races or classes allowed. One of the classes the dripped out of my brain late last night was this. If you know da Bode, then this will make sense.

PDF is here.

LIZZ

You are a righteous one. You da boss.

RESTRICTIONS

Your Prime Requisite is spunk, but that don’t matter. You got all the juice. You fight like a Thief. You can use little bitty weapons like daggers, short swords, and little bows. You can wear armor what was made or modified to fit ya, but you ain’t no good at it and when you gets hit with a 20 or you rolls a 1 it falls off. You gots a 3 in 6 shot at makin’ any magic doohickie do its thing but if ya rolls a 6 something real bad gonna go down.

SPECIAL ABILITIES

Lizard Luck: Sometimes da crazy universe has a heart an’ smiles luck down on ya like sweet rain. If things go south, you can petition the big ole ‘verse howevers ya like and if ya makes yer savin’ throw vs. spells somethin’ real good gonna go down. ‘Course… if ya was ta fail dat save real bad… well, you might get tossed about like a piece of cabbage.

Honey Magnet: You is not only da boss o’ adventure, you is da boss o’ the ladies. When you see a dew eyed sweetmeat of a mountain cantelope (a female, or whatever), you gotta save vs. spells or be compelled ta woo her wit witty words and witticism stuff. Roll a d20. If you happen ta gets a 20 she’s all into ya like a charm person done happened. Otherwise, who knows?

Naturally, this is a fan-fic post and the art and original characters are (c) copyright Bode.