S. Clay Wilson Livres

The is the definitive account of the boldest and most audacious of the legendary underground cartoonists: the taboo busting, eyeball blistering S. Clay Wilson. This first volume contains all of his underground comic stories from Zap Comix, Snatch, Gothic Blimp Works, Bogeyman, Felch, Insect Fear, Pork, Tales of Sex and Death, and Arcade magazine as well as the many adventures of the Checkered Demon, Star-Eyed Stella, and Captain Pissgums, and even his earliest collaborations with William Burroughs. Also: selections from his teenaged and college years, both in comics and painting form. First person accounts from his peers, as well as Wilson’s own words, offer a revealing portrait of the artist who hid his shyness behind brash behavior and bluster. This first of a three-volume biography and retrospective gets to the heart and soul of an artist who lived his dreams and his nightmares.

As the Age of Aquarius morphed into Discomania and Reaganomics, pioneering underground cartoonist S. Clay Wilson discovered a new generation of punks and misfits in America and abroad who appreciated his point of view. He found new outlets for his artwork in outré galleries and fringe publications, and continued to contribute to the surviving remnants of the underground, including the never-say-die classic anthology, Zap Comix. He made two tours of Europe, collaborated with William Burroughs and Ken Kesey, appeared on MTV, and had several highly acclaimed exhibitions in Seattle, Los Angeles, and New York. The Checkered Demon became ascendant among his creations ― the prolific headliner of a series of comic titles that followed his adventures around the earth and across the galaxies. This is the second of a three-volume series reprinting his best comics and chronicling his life in a series of prose chapters. Demons and Angels features his two solo comics, 2 and 22, strips fromCocaine Comix, Knockabout, Weird Smut, and all his stories from Zap Comix #6–11. Strips in obscure mags like Jump Start, Mondo Montana, Deadbeat, Too Fun Too Huge, Boiled Owl, Maggot-Zine, andWeird Smut are also included, as well as many never published privately commissioned watercolors and paintings produced for his discriminating art collectors.

This book includes all of the cartoonist's work from Zap Comix #12 through #15; stories published in the horror anthology Taboo; the three appearances of his outrageous, race-bending character Meadows from Weirdo; illustrations for Grimm and Andersen fairy tales; as well as book jackets and album covers. Plus, dozens of privately commissioned paintings, including the Seven Deadly Sins (Just Say Yes!) and inner landscapes peopled with pirates, ogres, leprechauns, Cyclops, the Baby Jesus, and his favorites players, Captain Pissgums, Star-Eyed Stella, and the Checkered Demon. It also includes an even score of remarkably rendered paintings, both unpublished and virtually unseen, that he created between the 2006 publication of The Art of S. Clay Wilson and The Night the Lights Went Out in 2008, when Wilson’s career spiraled out of control.