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Cartoonist/Artist Mark Bode: ‘60s Poster Boy? by Doniphan Blair
Mark Bode's portrait of his father Vaughn Bode, underground cartooning pioneer who welcomed him into a world of wonder, comics and art. illo: V.Bode
ON THE FACE OF IT, THE YOUNG MARK
Bode must have seemed troubled. Not only had his father, Vaughn Bode, died in a weird way when he was young but he was a pioneering underground and pornographic cartoonist who got into crossdressing after a religious awakening by an Indian boy guru.
His passing was devastating, leaving Bode the younger and his mother in a literal underground situation, the criminal scene of Rochester, New York, replete with hookers and thieves. Fortunately, the twelve-year-old Mark was able to engineer their escape by convincing her to move to San Francisco.
But they arrived right after the “fall of love”, the destruction of the Haight-Ashbury by overpopulation, addiction and abandonment.
Underground comics, which had been exploding in San Francisco for a decade, and into which Mark had hoped to venture, was also in a death spiral. Even R. Crumb, king of the scribblers and a friend of his father, Vaughn Bode, rudely rejected Mark.
This must have been hard on Mark, in that he grew up alongside and then INSIDE cartoons. His father started cartooning the year he was born (1963) but, as he got older, brought Mark into his fantasy cartoon world and then taught him how to draw, all the while conveying an elevated sense of wonder, enthusiasm and exploration.
Mark got his first commercial art gig while still in high school, Berkeley High: a poster for the San Francisco prostitute’s union, COYOTE (Call Of Your Old Tired Ethics). As it happened, his future wife Molly volunteered at COYOTE, although she was an activist feminist not a prostitute.
Mark Bode with Molly, his wife of over 30 years, at their home in Daly City, south of San Francisco. photo: V.Bode
Whatever sordidness this may imply to the more prurient among us, not to mention the frequent wreckage of celebrity offspring or of the '60s itself, Mark's is a spectacular success story.
Indeed, he proceeded to take over the family art business, drawing his dad's characters, from Cheech Wizard to the Bode Broads, drawing his own material while continuing characters or finishing projects initiated by his father. Moreover, Molly and Mark married in their 20s and are still very much together, having raised a thirty-something daughter in very stable households around the Bay Area and, for a while, Massachusetts.
Evolving beyond his father, who worked only with sharpies and ink, Mark got into street and graffiti art and murals, using spray cans, and doing gallery shows with painted oil canvases, which has become his primary means of support.
While Vaugn Bode's basic bio can seem strange, he was notably loving, sensitive and encouraging which, along with his inspiration and discipline, made for a fantastic father and role model. Mark's mother was also very supportive, as was the underground cartoonist community.
As these assets accumulate, Bode becomes a poster child for the hippie kids who came of age in the dark days of San Francisco’s Fall of Love but proceeded to build productive and artistic lives.
When I dropped by his home and jam-packed basement studio in Daly City, south of San Francisco, Molly graciously invited me for dinner which she was proceeding to cook. We had met before through our mutual friend, author, filmmaker and hooker activist, Lottie Da.
Mark and I started our discussion with the “Summer of Love” show at Golden Gate Park’s De Young Museum (see cS article).
The Bodes's principal character, Cheech Wizard, came to Vaughn after seeing Disney's 'Fantasia' ('39); here in a version by Mark. illo: M.Bode
Mark Vaughn: The show was OK. Personally I wanted to see more of stuff that Jimi Hendrix wore, more clothing that Jim Morrison—that kind of thing.
cineSOURCE: The cartooning wasn’t that well represented—it was just all posters. I don’t remember seeing any frames of cartoons.
I know Victor Moscoso and Greg Irons were in the show, a couple of pieces. I have Greg Irons tattoos on me—not that he did but his designs. He was a tattoo-er as well.
But mostly posters and no comics?
Right. Summer of Love. I guess they were just concentrating on that—there was a lot going on back then that they didn’t cover.
Your father had come out [to San Francisco] in ’73, right?
Yeah.
His first comic book was ‘Das Kampf’, a parody of Charles Schultz’s ‘Love Is’. My father’s parody was ‘War Is’. He did a 100 little, single panel illustrations with little punch lines, hand numbered. He did them on a Ditto machine.
Was it against war in general, ‘cause it was a little early for the Vietnam War?
War in general. But there were only 100 copies made. One of those in perfect condition now goes for about $5000. A second version came out in the ‘80s, not nearly as expensive. Recently, it was reprinted again, in French.
So it is still in print—his first comic book—and I was born that year [1963]. So I kind of represent how long the Bode art work has been here.
Did you move with him out here in ’73?
I came originally with him, when he moved from Utica, NY, to San Francisco with his good buddy Lenny Gotti. We had my father’s Opal GT in tow behind the U-Haul truck.
My mom was still living back east in Rochester [NY]. They had broken up in ’72 or so. But they were still lovers and still together but my father was too crazy.
He had 'come out' at some point in there?
Yeah, definitely. He found a guru that changed him. He started coming out more and more of the shell he was in, from when he was a young man. He had been in the military, crew-cut, very straight, a totally different person. He came out like a butterfly.
Some of Mark Bode's recent fine art canvases which he displays in gallery shows a few times a year. illo: M.Bode
Around what year was that?
I think it was 1970. He saw Guru Majaraj Ji, a boy guru who was going around [and came to New York in 1971].
My father was in a room full of people waiting to meet him. He came out and saw my father and pointed at him and said, ‘You come here.’ He took him into another room and said, ‘The answer is within you,’ and touched my father on his forehead.
He had a religious experience and was never the same after that.
He started growing his hair, started coming out sexually, started paying more attention to the female side of his id, started crossing-dressing more, but still kind of in the closet. As he blossomed in the next few years, he came out completely, right towards the end.
But not gay?
Bisexual definitely, but he preferred women. It wasn’t not on his palette to be with a beautiful man. He actually dated one of Andy Warhol’s stars, Mario Montez, I think his name was, a cross-dressing female impersonator. Vaughn went to Puerto Rico with Mario.
To get his operation?
No, I don’t know if Mario did that. But Mario was very famous because he was in a lot of Andy Warhol’s little films. My dad was hanging with Mario quite a bit.
So your dad didn’t have the LSD enlightenment experience?
He did, he experimented. But, as far as I know, he only did it once, here in California at his brother’s house. There’s a couple of pictures of him under the sheets smiling, having a good time. He was definitely inspired by it—had a good reaction—but it definitely didn’t fuel his art.
Drugs in general didn’t fuel his art, although sometimes he would use marijuana to get some ideas, to turn inside himself.
A Vaughn Bode comic book cover, his raw intensity on display. illo: V.Bode
I was reading his Wikipedia entry and it mentions his death—which we don’t have to go into—but it seems like you are in the perfect position to evaluate living with the ‘60s craziness. There is a down side to having a famous parent and a down side to having a parent who is a cross-dresser. To have it all together?
Yeah, having a famous parent can make you or break you. It definitely made me.
I was encouraged—methodically encouraged, religiously encouraged. Everyday, my father would say, “You can do anything! You can be a cartoonist, or you can be a musician, or you can be whatever you heart desires—you could be president!’
You know how easy it is to be president now.
[Mutual laughter]
His encouragement and his love and the way we shared time together. I only knew him for 12 years, as he died in ’75 when I was 12, but we were really super close. Every day was a new adventure with him when I was a child.
He brought me up to think his characters were real. Somebody would make you believe in the Easter Bunny or Santa Claus, I had Cheech Wizard and the lizards and the Bode Broads.
Cheech Wizard?
Yeah, he was always there, like our secret friend. My dad would read me his latest strip and say, ‘This is what Cheech and I did yesterday. Let’s go see if we can find him.’ We would make a bag lunch and go wait for him on a hillside.
I would ask, ‘Why does he never come?’ ‘Oh he’s busy. He’s ballin’ broads and doing tricks. He has lots of stuff going on. He’ll show up eventually.’
What he was doing to me, as a four or five year-old kid, is getting me to imagine that he would come up the hill and meet with us. In way, in a nice way, he brainwashed me into a style, which became a family style.
When he died, it seemed like it was all over. But I had a choice—my mother and I were all alone—and I had a choice that it would either break me or make me. I decided it was best if I reincarnated my friends.
Maybe I can’t bring my father back physically but I can bring back those characters, those friends that died, too. So they are my family. They stay with me and keep me company. I am happier when I am with them.
When I am working on my own thing, I am a lot more broody and definitely more critical. I do some of my nicest work when I am doing my own thing. But I am never as happy than when I’m doing something with Cheech or the Bode Broads. It just makes me happy, makes me feel whole, that I am carrying on with that.
We all have different strengths—obviously, my father was a creative genius. He created thousands of characters at a breakneck pace, night and day. It’s like he didn’t sleep.
Mark Bode opens up easily at his dining room table about his complex upbringing and 'art education'. photo: D.Blair
It’s very moving what you are telling me. I know a few kids of famous parents and it is not like that at all.
With Vaughn’s encouragement, I have a lot confidence. His strengths were creating worlds and telling stories. My strengths come in diversity: I do comics, I write my own comics, I have gone through phases, I tattoo. Now I have branched into street art; I am doing murals, gallery shows.
My father never painted. He always used flair pens and markers and design markers. He always wanted to paint but he couldn’t. I just got into oil painting.
He didn’t have an art school education?
He did. He graduated from Syracuse University, I think in ’66 or ’67.
So he published a cartoon book AND got an education. He was very industrious.
Yes, in a huge way. He was almost compelled to go as fast as could. I think he knew he had a short time on earth—he could feel it. He worked day and night. When he was young, he never had that ‘Oh, I am going to live forever’ thing so many people have. He always felt there was no tomorrow and he had to work to get his ideas out there.
As a result he left lots of ideas and stuff unfinished—that is where I came in. It was essential he had someone like me. I was almost part of the whole plan, to finish what he started, because there wasn’t enough time for him.
He was twenty years ahead [of his time], at least, maybe even thirty, in the ‘60s with his toys, his characters. The Japanese hadn’t fully grasped ‘manga’ cartoons, you know, and my father was already doing characters that would be like the things you see now in Japanese animation.
They were still on ‘Speed Racer’ and ‘Astro Boy’ and my father was doing stuff like [the arty animation director Hayao] Miyazaki, back in the ‘60s. The science fiction—crazy, over the top. He had a big love for that.
Who did he look to there? Clark, Heinlein?
He was close friends with Roger Zellazny [a poet and author of fantasy and science fiction]. He actually hung out with Isaac Asimov. I have a book signed ‘To Vaughn: In admiration for what you create,’ from Isaac Asimov—so he must have made an impression on Asimov.
He obviously would have read Heinlein and Phillip K. Dick because Vaughn collected everything—he was just downloading information.
He had an enormous book collection?
Another intricate Mark Bode painting embodying some of the fantasy and sci-fi of his father's work. illo: M.Bode
Yeah and a lot he couldn’t afford, so he stole. He stole a lot of those books. He would go to the used bookstores as a teen and buy a couple and sneak a couple.
Were there any touchstones he really looked to?
His inspiration came from the early cartoonists like ‘Alley Oop’ by V.T. Hamlin, you can see [Hamlin’s] style in his characters’ feet.
Walt Kelly?
Walt Kelly, obviously, his ‘Okiefenokie Swamp’. [Kelly’s] alligator dudes kinda look a lot like a [Bode] lizard. And they all talked with ‘dose’ and ‘dats’, that all came from Walt Kelly.
Disney was probably his biggest influence. He got more ideas from Disney.
What was his favorite movie?
‘Fantasia’, that would be number one, his biggest inspiration as a child. He went to ‘Fantasia’ whenever it came around. He got his best ideas, like Cheech Wizard, from ‘Fantasia’.
Yes, there is moment when the hat falls over Mickey.
Right, during ‘The Sorcerer’s Apprentice’, after the wizard wakes up and makes all the broomsticks fly away and he’s leering at Mickey. Mickey takes the hat off and offers it back and the hat kinks at the top.
Well, that was my dad’s moment. He went home and he drew two legs under that hat and it became Cheech Wizard.
He took the hat back in broken form and made that into Cheech Wizard! And his wizard was mostly about getting high and making love to women?
Later. At first, in the early strips, he was more trying to do pseudo-tricks. He actually performed magic in his early strips.
Kind of a trickster?
Yeah, but everything would go wrong. He was never a honed wizard and later he just became shit fake. It was just too much work to do real magic. He would just kick the lizard in the balls and say, ‘Now you know what time distortion is all about.’ [laughs]
You think Cheech captures that time? Is any of his stuff, like, ‘meta’?
I can’t categorize him like that. Some of his work was, like his ‘Junk Waffle’. He did a lot of anti-war political comics. A lot anti-Vietnam war stuff he did was in ‘Junk Waffle'.
Mark Bode at his drawing table, surrounded by art work and artifacts. photo: D.Blair
But his fantasy stuff was more Tolkien, definitely a Hobbit kind of world [which] populated itself. It was a real place he could go to and that is probably why it has so much staying power.
It doesn’t emulate a certain era. I think 50 or 100 years from now, someone could really enjoy picking up a ‘Dead Bone’ or a ‘Cheech Wizartd’ comic and still get the humor—nothing would seem dated. It will last forever, or that is what we all hope. [chuckles]
He was a little too sophisticated for me when I was getting into Zap Comics at 14, which is why I preferred Crumb. Speaking of which, is there a little rivalry or feud?
No but there is no closeness. I think I was closer to his daughter Sophie then I was ever to Robert.
Robert was buddies with my father but I think it was just out of convenience because Vaughn was so pretty and Robert was kind of gangly and awkward. So the two of them didn’t really didn’t make a pair. [laughs]
But Vaughn did tell Ralph Bakshi not to work on ‘Fritz the Cat’ [a Crumb project taken over by Hollywood producers which was eventually very successful].
Cartoonists looked out for each other. [Crumb and Vaughn] worked with each other on ‘The Gothic Blimp’.
Out of [Manhattan's] East Village, with the East Village Other [weekly]?
I am not sure if Crumb was in the East Village but he contributed to ‘The Gothic Blimp’. My father edited that for a short time.
My father even took over [Crumb’s] spot in Cavalier Magazine —you know the ‘Fritz the Cat’ strip in Cavalier. [Crumb] got tired, he didn’t want to work for a magazine, he wanted to do the Zap thing.
When he left, my father took over and started doing a four-pager every month. That is where my dad’s major body of work comes from. He actually had three to four pages every month in Cavalier Magazine.
I am totally unfamiliar.
Cavalier, Dude, Swank, Screw—all those are for the grey-coat crowd.
No wonder they felt free to do X-rated stuff.
After my father passed, I was just a young boy and I begged my mom to move to San Francisco—I couldn’t take the bleakness of Rochester, New York.
Well, you had already lived here.
And I saw how gorgeous it was. I was twelve or thirteen and told my mother, ‘We got to move and do what we can to get out there.’ She listened.
My first meeting with Crumb was not a good one. He had no sympathy for young boys. Maybe if I was a young girl he would have given me the time of day. I came up to him and said, ‘So you’—I remember the conversation very well. Crumb's band, The Cheap Suit Seranaders, was playing at a party in Oakland.
Despite the turmoil of his life and presumed depravity of his work, Mark laughs easily and seems very relaxed, at peace even. photo: D.Blair
I said to him, ‘So you are a friend of my dad’s?’ And he said, ‘Yeah.’ ‘So you knew him pretty well?’ ‘Yeah.’ “You got any stories?’ ‘No.’
He just like totally threw me to the wind—so cold! I was like, ‘OK,’ and kind of walked away. ‘One of his shunned characters,’ I thought.
Later on, he continued to treat me that way for no other reason then I was a male and probably similar to his son, who he was also treating that way. His son, from his first wife, is similar in age to me.
Then I started dating my wife, Molly. Crumb has drawn her several times and makes no qualms of having a ‘thing’ for her and her ‘bean’ shape.
Was she a pussycat character in something?
No, he did a couple of portraits.
She sat for them?
No. He saw us at a party. I go, ‘Hi Robert,’ and reach my hand out. He pushed me away, in a rude fashion, practically by my face, to get to Molly.
Then he asked, ‘Can I clamber on your leg?’ She said, ‘Absolutely not!’ Then he would clamber on a fan’s leg right next to her and stare at her. It’s hard to like. [laughs]
I didn’t lash out because I knew that he had a problem and I just happened to be with a woman that fit his attraction. If I had, I would’ve been the dolt in one of his strips that kicked him or punched him in the head. He is the cowering and pathetic one, non-deserving of my wrath. [laughs]
The guy is extremely injured, as I know from the movie a friend worked on.
Oh, you know Terry [Zwigoff, who did ‘Crumb’ 1994]?
I knew [the movie’s sound person] Joam Araujo. But I went out drinking with Terry once and the impression was similar to what you are giving.
I wish I didn’t know him personally. Actually, if I didn’t know him at all, I would be a complete fan. But since I know him, I shudder when I see his stuff. The better it gets, the more I shudder. [laughs, extensively]
You probably knew the other guys: Mouse, Griffith?
Rick Griffith was a great man, very supportive to me when I was younger. Greg Irons was another one. I am really good friends with Paul Mavrides, who works as a freelance artist but also worked on the ‘Furry Freak Brothers’ with Gilbert Shelton for years and years. Whenever we get to France, we have dinner with Gilbert and his wife, Lora Fountain.
We are definitely in the underground comics family—what is left of it. It really died.
Mark reviewing a piece by S. Clay Wilson from his extensive collection of underground cartoonist work. photo: D.Blair
Underground comics was born when I was. I grew up with it and, all of a sudden, it ended. In the late ‘70s, it was just about dead, just a few more years.
What did those guys do to support themselves?
A few of them continued on. Crumb and Shelton, they moved to France, where it is still possible to make a really nice living. You get treated with a red carpet in France. They put millions into the arts. It is not like here, where there is not a whole lot of money being pumped in, if you don’t have a movie deal or something.
After my dad died, it slowly seemed to die. Also the Reagan and Bush era, they started sending plants into comic stores. People who looked younger then they were, they'd go in and buy some underground comics and they'd bust the store owner.
For porn?
Yeah. This happened across the board during the ‘80s—that killed underground comics.
Where else are you going to sell it? You couldn’t sell in on Haight Street any more. The head shops were having their own trouble: they couldn’t sell paraphernalia—you could busted for paraphernalia at certain times, too.
No one wanted to carry underground comics any more, no one really cared. So I got to see the death of the underground.
There was no extra little support here in San Francisco?
Not really. Rip-Off Press is still here. Last Gasp is still here but they are not publishing. Fantagraphics now is in Seattle and they still publish underground comics. They did an anthology of Spain and Zap Comics recently.
I remember Modernism Gallery has a show of Crumb panels, that was pretty incredible and you could buy them for not much, a thousand bucks. That was the amazing thing about San Francisco, that whole thing went down here and so few said, ‘Hey, this is San Francisco culture, we need to preserve it.’
Ron Turner, Last Gasp's publisher and editor, would have a lot to say to that. Ron is getting his day, tributes, awards from the City. My father worked for Ron; he did his ‘Cheech Wizard’.
But it has become alternative comics now. Underground comics morphed into alternative, which to me is watered down. In underground comics, you could do anything, draw anything, say anything! But alternative comics has borderlines. Invisible but they have borderlines.
Like you said: Crumb and S. Clay Wilson—
Yes: ‘The head tastes best!’ [from an S. Clay Wilson strip of a pirate cutting off and eating another pirate’s penis].
You know, it is just not in the water any more. I don’t know.
Some of it is very misogynist—you ever get that critique?
Vaughn Bode made sculptures of his characters, like Cheech Wizard (shown here), to study them while also prefiguring modern marketing. photo: D.Blair
Oh yeah.
When I was doing the ‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle’ [movies] in the late-‘80s, I was on the gravy train any cartoonist would dream of. I was getting paid so well—making six figures being a comic artist, unheard of.
My friends became multimillionaires over night and Kevin [Eastman, creator of ‘TMNT’] was a big fan of my dad. You can see a little influence in the Ninja turtles, a little Bode in the hands and the feet.
So, in my spare time, I was being as naughty as I possible could, working on ‘Cherry Pop-Tart’ with Larry Wells and doing pornographic comics. I didn’t care if I didn’t get paid. And I didn’t have to polish myself up for the public
Once I did a comic strip with GWAR, the shock rock band—they are pretty hardcore. We did a comic book together—my idea: ‘GWAR Meets The Hunchback of Cunnilingus’. He had been eating Slyminstra’s pussy for a thousand years and his face became a concave version of her pussy. I love that strip,
You must’ve gotten some flack for that one?
The place I got in trouble was I started performing these things live.
Didn’t your father do—
The ‘Cartoon Concerts’? Yeah.
I did my own version and I upped the ante. ‘The Hunchback of Cunnilingus’, I did that live opening for GWAR. The fans were chanting, ‘GWAR, GWAR!’ I thought I was gonna get killed, they were going to throw tomatoes, a thousand people who didn’t want me there.
But my material was—thank god—so X-rated that, as soon I got into the reading, they quieted down and started yelling ‘You sick fuck!’ So I had acceptance and GWAR said I was the opening act which never got booed off the stage.
I did this show in London and about 300 people showed up for my slide show. It was a graffiti event. At the end, this lady came up to me and said, ‘You really like big tits, don’t ya!’ She was angling for a fight.
But I said, ‘I really don’t like big tits—my father taught me to draw them like that.’ [laughs] 'And I have been drawing them like that ever since I was little, seven years old. It is really not a choice.’
She just melted down. The mother in her like melted down. I could see steam coming out of her ears. She thought she was going to come up to a guy who would answer, ‘Oh yeah, love ‘em—big bubbly ones!’ Instead she got a child who was forced to draw them that way. [laughs]
Visual sex slave?
What can you say? Your parent abused you?
Did Vaughn develop that [sexy cartoon girl] look of the stretching of the fabric between the nipples?
Bode ranges widely, drawing from all sides of the arts as well as society, in his life as well as work. photo: D.Blair
I suppose. He might have gotten that from Wally Wood, who was a big inspiration. Wally Wood inspired the Bode Broads. When my father saw Wally drawing his little forest nymphs—my father [snaps fingers] did his version and that is when the Bode Broads were born. The stretching of the cloth would come from Wally.
When you talk about ‘The Hunchback of Cunnilingus’, its seems to me—to use a weird word—that extreme porn is a prophylactic. Once you go there, you realize it is just a part of life.
Today we are in very weird situation: Everyone is into extreme porn but there is also an extreme reaction against it. A weird sort of hypocrisy.
Right. I’m not messing with it anymore. I mean, I have realized which side my bread is buttered on. When I was younger, in my 20s and 30s, I had no fear. Now I don’t feel it is necessary to shock people like that. I felt it was my job. The underground was dying and I was going to keep it in their face as long as I fucking could.
But I decided I would rather be doing gallery shows and traveling and doing, you know, art in the streets. You can’t do pornographic art in the streets. You can’t license to Puma [sneakers] the hip-hop characters of your fathers if you are doing stuff like that.
It could cause you to not get work, at times. I am more into the ebb and flow. I want to keep my sails full. I want to keep going forward. And being a bad boy doesn’t really fit in any more.
One time someone told me, ‘We are going to [publish] all these street artists and you can do any story you want.’
So I said, ‘Oh really? Well, I have a story I have been thinking about for a while now. It was called ‘Morning Wood.’ Actually it didn’t end up in the book. When it went to press the printer shut down the press.
It was called ‘Jesus Fetus Christ Mother Fucking Muhammad’—nothing offensive there! [laughs] Just trying to hit them all, hit a home run. Let’s offend everyone.
It was about a fetus who was the born-again Jesus. A bunch of anti-abortion people bombed him and his mother. Everyone died except for him because he is the son of god, you know.
He was being reborn and they didn’t know it. When he came up, everyone said, ‘It’s the sign of the devil!’—all the religious types who bombed the place. Actually it was their savior, in front of them, as a fetus.
Where can I see some of this?
I have to show it to you—you can’t see it. I have some copies. It got shut down. The publisher was good with it but not the printer.
Was that here in San Francisco?
Yes but I ended up printing it with some free magazine in New York City, Anima. They printed it on a dare. I said, ‘They wouldn’t print it.’ And they said, ‘We’ll print it, give it to us.’
Sometimes censorship can be helpful. But now you’re doing murals, gallery shows?
Gallery shows is where most of my money is coming from. I do two or three of those a year. I can do paintings in between and build up for those shows.
And your studio is right down stairs? So what was your weirdest gig?
Up in Covelo, where the river rocks had gotten all graffiti-ed up, I spray painted the rocks to make it look like nature. [laughs]
The people who were bathing, they'd see me swim over and start shaking the cans and they are like, ‘What the fuck?’ They were going to kick my ass until they realized, ‘Oh my god, he is making it go away.’ It should have been sandblasted but it looks good.
Molly knows Lottie [our old mutual friend] from COYOTE [San Francisco’s Prostitute Union]?
In the end, Bode's light manner, deep arts and '60s inheritance made him seem like a success story for a San Francisco scene that once was. photo: D.Blair
My first job was for Margo St. James—there’s a portrait of Margo right over, gesso-ed and everything.
I just saw Lottie’s documentary about Margo and Lottie. In the movie, Lottie looks like a Bode character: like a little, chubby twiggy. Margo is a powerhouse and incredible speaker, I didn’t realize. I met her once but never saw her in action.
Margo, in 1979, gave me first professional job outside of coloring stuff for my dad. My first real job was for Margo’s Hooker’s Ball T-Shirt. She paid me $750 bucks—a fortune back then. I was still in high school, living with my mom in Berkeley.
Is that where you lived when you and your dad moved out.
My dad lived in San Francisco, like 10th and Irving. Then he moved to 20th and Delores where he died. There is a house that is almost right on the corner and his studio is still there.
Preserved?
No but I can still go visit it. I wanted to talk to the people but I don’t think they would want to hear about some obscure cartoonist, in their mind, who died there.
Yeah, they’re putting in a baby room that might disrupt their fantasies.
Yeah. The first house, he called the potato house—I don’t know why but that is how he felt about it. He wanted to move out of there was soon as possible.
When we first moved in, I was walking down to basement and I heard this guttural animal sound ‘Argggh. Argggh.’ So I kinda backed up the stairs and told my dad. They went down there and there was nothing.
But then, the next few nights, at five in morning I start hearing the noise again. My father was so connected to me, he came from the other room and said ‘Is something wrong?’ I didn’t say anything but I was scared out of my mind, like having ‘The Exorcist’'s Linda Blair right outside my window.
He looked in to it and asked the neighbors. They were primal screamers and that was their ritual they did at the end of the day and beginning of the day. ‘Great but it scares the fuck out of my kid.’
That circles back to the beginning of what we were talking about. You grew up in the chaos of that time. Some of that was scary and injurious but you seem to have weathered rather well. Do you have any words of wisdom?
I don’t think a normal person could process all this. I think I had very open parents who exposed me to sex and violence and all the things. There was no learning curve as child, 'cause I already knew about it.
‘Let’s go see ‘Clockwork Orange’ son because this is not real. They do fake blood, they do violent things to people but it is not real. It is almost like a comic book,’ he explained. I went to see ‘Clockwork Orange’ at seven. People were just about ready to kick my dad's ass for bringing me in there. But I was OK with it.
I think it is: 'Just don’t hide stuff from your kids.' After my dad died, my mom and me had some really rough times. In Rochester the darkest things: hanging out with criminals, pimps and prostitutes.
I was given a dog, to kind of replace my father, and this guy stole my dog—a show dog—and we got it back, from a guy with a gun. My mother's car was also stolen—all the space of a year.
I didn’t realize Rochester had such an underworld.
I would never go back there even if I had a chance. I am sure it changed now but it was dark it was just a downward spiral for my mother and me.
That is way I came through with this agreement. I was thinking very clearly as a twelve year-old kid: 'We are either going to see our demise or we are going to move to California.' That is why we got to move out here with Vincent [Vaughn’s brother]. 'Vincent will help us, that is why we gotta do it.'
But after you experienced all that darkness as child, you find a way to process it. You get some calm from the storm; you get to be the eye of the storm. I think this where I am; this is where I live. [laughs] It is fine, happily in the middle.
But you can’t tell someone how to roll with the punches like that. You learn how deal with a horrible situation because you have seen worse but you have processed it.
It’s seems like your father was an upbeat loving guy who gave you a good guiding vibration.
Yeah, we are about to start a documentary on him. I had four different directors coming at me to do a Vaughn Bode story. I figured, well, there’s four so that must be something that needs to happen.
I went with the one who seemed to have the best heart for it: my friend Nick Francis. The first one I turned down. She did a documentary on Jeff Jones, my father’s best friend, called ‘Better Things’. It actually climaxes in the middle of the movie when he starts talking about my father’s relationship with him.
Jeff blames himself for my father’s death. I was able to get a rebuttal in because Jeff died during the filming and I was able to say that, ‘No, it was not Jeff’s fault. Vaughn would have died several times by then.”
That lady came at me and we didn’t jibe. She seemed to be wanting to come at Vaughn from a cross-dressing [perspective], the darker stuff, you know.
But I knew what he was about and wasn’t all that. That was part of him but there was so much more, excitement and adventure when you were hanging out with him.
We would walk down the street and see an ant struggling with a candy wrapper and he’d be like, ‘Look son. Look how mighty he is, an amazing life form. Imagine what is he going to do with that thing.’ We’d sit around and trip on little things like that.
You said he retained his child-like wonder state?
Oh yeah. Or he didn’t have it to begin with, so he was reinventing it.
So he had a rough childhood? It said in Wikipedia his father was an alcoholic.
Yeah big time, in upstate New York, Syracuse. The Bode kids were bad kids; they were in the streets.
JD or white trash?
Yeah, I suppose so.
What is the Bode name, Portuguese?
It is actually Alsace [France]. There is a Bode River there, It also means 'bode well.' I also means moat, protect the castle.
Well, you are keeping it very much alive.
Yes.
Doniphan Blair is a writer, film magazine publisher, designer and filmmaker ('Our Holocaust Vacation'), who can be reached .