Cheech Wizard and the Lizards – A Tribute to Vaughn Bodē

28 June 2025 · 20:10 · VenRod

New York – 28 June 2025, 20:10. A comic shop café, DeeNice in a corner with a stack of old comics and a very happy face.

Characters on the trains

This tribute goes further back. Vaughn Bodē (1941–1975) was an underground comic artist, famous for Cheech Wizard – a little figure hidden under a huge hat – and for his lizards and curvy characters. He never painted subway cars himself, but in the 1970s and 1980s graffiti writers copied his characters onto trains all over New York. Many of the first characters next to graffiti letters came straight out of his comics.

We visited an exhibition with his drawings and comic pages. It's strange and wonderful to see the originals of figures you know from photos of painted trains.

How it went

The best kind of nerdy. DeeNice realised that without characters like Bodē's, there might be no cats next to our letters today. Kinky winking, SinDee in sunglasses, PoshX with her glasses – they all have great-grandparents in these comics. What we take home: a character can travel further than its creator ever did.

Every cat on our walls owes a little to a wizard in a big hat. – DeeNice

The Klitty Crew is a comic universe – all stories, meetings and events on this blog are fiction. Real artists, magazines and places only appear as inspiration; no real meetings, statements or endorsements are implied.