The art of S. Clay Wilson
S. Clay Wilson (Artist), R. Crumb (Writer of introduction)
The long-awaited career retrospective of the godfather of underground comix, The Art of S. Clay Wilson follows the artist from his transformative discovery of comic books more than fifty years ago to the grungy streets of Haight-Ashbury, the high-falutin' walls of the Art Institute of Chicago, and beyond. The first Zap cartoonist to have pushed art into an unfathomably vulgar realm, Wilson creates a Rabelaisian world of pirate fraggings, motorcycle gang brawls, lecherous outerspace demons, blade freaks, ludicrous bondage sessions, and betrayals by black-hearted beauties. Described variously as "Belgium lace from hell" and "a slideshow of perverted protozoa," Wilson's drawings exhibit the most tortured form of graphic agoraphobia, or what he calls a fear of white space. Beginning with strips from Wilson's innocent early years and working chronologically to present day, the drawings quickly degenerate into the salacious depictions of pirates, prostitutes, and poets that inhabit his depraved world. Once you digest the first layer of Wilson's mayhem, you get sucked into the compulsive details exploding across the page. Color drawings from Wilson's recent years appear for the first time in print, as do never-before-seen commissions. Including the Checkered Demon, Captain Pissgums, Ruby the Dyke, and the Hog Riding Fools, all of S. Clay Wilson's classic characters are finally collected here, to the shock and horror of the buttoned-down masses and for the worship of his generations of fans. -- from dust jacket
Print Book, English, 2006
Ten Speed Press, Berkeley, California, 2006