The Checkered Demon

Most people remember S. Clay Wilson for the wildly original and dirty comics he contributed to ZAP underground comix in the 1960s. He created notorious characters like the Checkered Demon, Ruby the Dyke and Captain Pissgums. The characters’ names reflected their wild demeanors. Wilson was one of the first cartoonists to draw shocking comics depicting taboo subjects making people laugh at the same time. 
The late Thomas Albright (award winning art critic for San Francisco Chronicle, Art News and Rolling Stone), who featured Wilson in his book Art in the San Francisco Bay Area. 1945-1980, said of Wilson’s early artwork, 

Wilson had come from Kansas with a series of cartoons that drew, as Crumb’s did, on the “realistic” narrative tradition
of American comics; but they were distinguished by a prolix, steely style and a prediliction for unbridled raunch: orgiastic fantasies involving motorcycle gangs, pirates, urban hustlers and the scum of the Old West. Crumb credited Wilson with starting,”this big sex revolution in comics.” (p. 175 )

Wilson and Lorraine

Los Angeles writer and bon vivant Andrew Sevrin said this about Wilson’s work,” Captain Pissgums was always fun to read, but the best piece he ever did was about a hit man in Sodom and Gomorrah. Very cool stuff." 

Even if you don’t remember ZAP the fact that punk rock icons like Chrissie Hynde and Shane MacGowan are BIG fans of his might motivate more people to check his work out. He also drew an album cover for punk band the Accused in the 80s. 

Unfortunately, the 67-year old artist suffered a severe head injury in early November of 2008 and has been hospitalized ever since. He is bravely struggling to recover with the help of his lovely and witty partner Lorraine Chamberlain who is a fascinating person and artist in her own right. She was Frank Zappa’s longtime live-in partner and subsequent muse from time to time until his death. Hopefully she will publish a book of her memoirs one day since she is such great storyteller. She coined the term Lumpy Gravy as a nickname for Frank in the 60s. 

I myself lived with S. Clay for a number of years in the late 90s and always look back fondly on our time together. He drew me on the cover of a Zap comic and drew my portrait in a couple of his books. 

He is truly a one of kind, true artist with an unrepentantly FREE vision of creativity. This makes him a perfect fit for a Punk Globe profile since to me punk rock is about freedom of expression. Wilson said to me in an interview I did with him years ago for his Guggenheim art grant application, 

Wilson's Art

"Throughout my career I have had to constantly defend my art work against critics who wish to censor it because of its depiction of aberrant imagery. My work, for example, was seized and burned in December 1991 by the Royal Mounted Canadian Police (“This is Dynamite” in Taboo Magazine along with Crumb’s Weirdo comic were the burned works) because its imagery was considered too obscene and violent for importation to Canada. It upsets me that some critics wish to censor and go so far as to destroy my artwork because of its subject matter. People are shocked that I, as an artist, would choose to depict the themes that I do. I am not the characters I draw, I am the artist that draws the characters or,i n other words, just because I depict evil does not mean that I am evil." 

Aside from a depictor of wild Dionysian revelry he is also one of the most sensitive, well read and culturally well versed people I have ever met in my life. Wilson's favorite reggae song started out, "wake up in the morning . . ." it was called "Israelites" by Desmond Dekker. He was really peppy and optimistic and fun, just like that song, when he was in good spirits. He loved to read every night, Dylan Thomas or drawings by 19th century artists like George Grosz, that German guy who depicted the rise of German fascism in his charicatures. He loved that KPFA show where Joe Frank tells a story over a jazzy soundtrack. He taught me to appreciate Aubrey Beardsley, writer Terry Southern, great American illustrators like Howard Pyle, old Chicago blues artists, 60s fashion, smoked oysters to help a hangover, stories about other artists and personalities like Janis Joplin (Wilson dated her best friend Sunshine in the 60s), anecdotes about poets like Rick London and Beat generation writer Jack Micheline. 

Sunset aboard the Ruby

One time he got mad because I told him how I had interviewed and photographed Jack Micheline. Wilson used to complain that Micheline had not returned a corkscrew he had borrowed but that they were still friends. Micheline confessed to me that he secretly corresponded his erotic fantasies to women in prison about how much he loved asses. He did abstract paintings of giant butts kind of like that Yoko Ono photo series of butts. I felt nuttily inspired and said to Micheline, "Well, how do you like this?" and bent over and mooned him! I was young and zany at the time, and Jack was really old and sick from diabetes (he died a year later). Wilson wrinkled his nose in disgust when I told him about it. He really could be a prude when he was sober! Some time later however Wilson said after Jack Micheline died, " That was a nice thing you did, Rebecca, when you showed him your ass." 

Wilson is the ONLY person I have ever met who went to go see a movie EVERY single day of his life. He asked for his money back midway during the screening of "Blair Witch Project" because he said it was a like a bad student art film that made him seasick from the jerky handheld camera motion. He really loved foreign films and was a member of the foreign film society at the University of Nebraska where he went to school. He loved Fellini and Marcello Mastroianni and would often imitate him. He loved that film "Withnail and I" starring Richard Grant and the "Lavender Hill Mob" crime film from Britain in the late 50s, starring Alec Guinness. 

Wilson's Art

Of his education, Wilson said to me once in an interview I did with him,
"At the end of high school I won the Hallmark (Greeting Card) Scholarship to the Kansas City Art Institute, which would have paid my tuition in full had I accepted it. I chose, instead, to get a 'well-rounded college education' at the University of Nebraska where I majored in art and anthropology. I resisted the Art Department’s dogmatic encouragement for students to pump out abstract expressionism. I felt that teachers were encouraging this without teaching students basic nuts and bolts drawing and painting skills. I wanted, instead, to do fantastical figurative work which was derided by most members of the Art Department as being simply illustration or cartoons. I distinctly recall one professor who painted over several of my paintings, angrily scrubbing out the images, because he said,'They were illustration and not art.' I was a fledgling oddball romantic visionary who felt that my cartoon illustration work was seen as 'art with a little a' while fine art (paintings, abstract expressionism) was seen as 'Art with a big A.'"

I was with Wilson in Manhattan walking down the street with Howard Stern book author Ratso Sloman when we met Robert Hughes, the famous art critic, and Robert Hughes stared at Wilson (after I introduced Wilson) and said, "Are you him? I LOVE YOUR WORK!" I could see Wilson's chest swell as he beamed with pride. With four words Hughes put the ghost of Wilson’s awful university art professor to rest. That always meant a lot to Wilson that a big deal art critic whom he respected got it and respected his work. 

Wilson's Art

Wilson’s favorite praise he ever received (he told me during the Guggenheim interview) was from beat writer William Burroughs. Wilson was friends with Burroughs and contributed illustrations to a couple of books by William Burroughs. 

“Perhaps my favorite praise, however, was written by iconoclastic beat novelist William S. Burroughs for a catalog accompanying a one man show of mine in New York City at the Gallerie Surrealiste and Fantastique in 1982. Burroughs wrote, 

'At a time when the cartoonist’s genre seems to be merging into photography and painting, S. Clay Wilson stands out as a stylist and a craftsman as distinctive as Aubrey Beardsley. One look and you know it is a Wilson. He is also in the tradition of George Grosz, a savage social satirist with a flair for grotesquerie.
'Style is a special way of seeing and experiencing sensory data--the artist’s special way--so any artist, in effect, creates his own universe and outsiders may be presumptuous when they judge this universe by their own evaluation, not realizing that an artist’s universe operates by the artist’s rules. What may seem grotesque, horrible, and ugly is transmuted into mythologic figures as with the seven dwarfs.
'So the hideous lesbian pirate becomes an appealing comic figure in the Wilson universe. Look at the detail in Wilson’s work, the care disposed on every line. I don’t feel that he hates his material, as Grosz did: they are his characters, his creations. Wilson’s universe is a lunatic area of blood and mayhem that reassures because it is travesty -- it is not real.'"

The biographical interview I did with Wilson was for a Guggenheim art grant application, for which Wilson was rejected. In the application interview Wilson also told me about his early influences, 

The Art of S Clay Wilson

"When I was about 12 years old I discovered E.C. comics (which were eventually banned due to the lurid sexual overtones, horror and violence). I was totally inspired by the amazing variety of artwork and text within E.C. comics and decided that I wanted to a cartoonist also. Thus inspired by E.C. comics, I compulsively began to draw comic strips on pieces of typing paper of an elaborate fantasy world populated by my own cartoon characters; pirates, space warriors, soldiers and little twin stunted vampire brothers named Ivan and Igor. These early characters were the predecessors of my later underground comic characters. During high school I became exposed to the work of Aubrey Beardsley, who has influenced my work heavily. I loved the sensual art nouveau calligraphic line quality and oriental influenced patterned composition of his work."

He submitted about ten slides in his Guggenheim application including an image of the Checkered Demon sticking a beer bottle up a man's ass in Dick's Bar the former favorite bar of Wilson's that had been turned into a leather gay bear bar. He didn't feel it was homophobic just what it was. I always wished I could have seen the looks on the Guggenheim committee when they saw that slide! Wilson refused to take it out. He always used to say,"Don't water down your whiskey" about having integrity in not compromising the creative vision. when we met Howard Stern briefly in Manhattan during my friend Ratso Sloman's book release party Wilson said, "Stay dirty!" to Stern. 

Ratso Sloman always used to say simply,”He’s so funny!” about Wilson. Ratso ran his work in the National Lampoon when he was the editor there. There are so many funny anecdotes one could tell about Wilson. There was the time he stayed in Los Angeles with painter Robert Williams and his wife Suzanne and burst into their bedroom, drunk (one of Wilson’s favorite states of consciousness), in the middle of the night and yelled, “I want a divorce!” to the startled pair. Robert Williams is the painter of the Guns and Roses "Appetite for Destruction" album cover of the alien and the woman sitting on the street. Williams was also a cartoonist for ZAP. 

Wilson and Lorraine 1977

On one of the last occasions I saw Wilson at a Juxtapoz opening (I used to write features for them from time to time) and he was sitting down. 
He was still bitter towards me over whatever and I strolled over to say hello and hopefully make peace. I was with my partner Paul Casteel, and Wilson said, "Have a seat!" to Paul and got up out of the chair and stormed off. I had to laugh because even in Wilson's meanness he was clever and funny. 

My friend, composer James Goode, wrote to me about Wilson, ”I hope he pulls through. I have fond (though somewhat hazy) memories of being invited to his apartment, smoking a joint with him, and being held captive by his stories of Burma Shave signage in the 40s (great book!), and Charles Crumb's marbleized notebook, the one with the Chester Gould-esque caricatures on the inside covers, and every page filled top to bottom with his own, invented language, impossible to decipher... Keep me up to date on his condition, if you would...” 

I cannot finish this piece without mentioning Wilson’s drinking. He was a notorious binge alcoholic who did not drink every day but regularly. When he got drunk he truly spoke in tongues and would laugh a guttural laugh and just turn into a demon (no pun intended, there was just no other word for it. He really was the checkered demon when he drank! ) Unfortunately his head injury occurred when he was walking home in the pouring rain while dangerously drunk. 

Wilson is a classic San Francisco semi-hermit, creative genius whom I hope and pray recovers. If y’all haven’t checked his work out already, please do! It still raises eyebrows, captivates and brings joy to the soul. 

Donations and get well cards can be sent to 

S. Clay Wilson
P.O. Box 14854
SF CA 94114

Rebecca W. Wilson and S.Clay Wilson in the Castro for Halloween
Photo: Marcia Wilson

back to homepage