WILSON, S. CLAY 699
Spider-Man (Miguel O’Hara) character from being an overstated heavy metal basher.
In the 1990s, he created a new comic adaptation of Lucas’s Star Wars: Th e Phantom
Menace and collaborated with Romita Jr. on the Spider-Man series.
Selected Bibliography: Cuthbert, Ray. “Th e Search for Al Williamson’s Flash Gordon
Number 1” (2002), http://www.comicartville.com/fl ashgordon.htm; Rhoades, Shirrel.
A Complete History of American Comics. New York: Peter Lang, 2008.
Stuart Lenig
WILSON, S. CLAY (1941–). Among the original contributors to Zap Comix, S. Clay
Wilson is infamous for his violent and hyper-sexual drawings, often containing a recur-
ring character, the Checkered Demon. An infl uential fi gure in the underground comics
scene, he shattered conventionality with his densely detailed strips crammed with devi-
ancy, carnage, and confusion.
Born in Lincoln, Nebraska, Wilson later attended the University of Nebraska and
earned a bachelor of fi ne arts degree in 1964. Wilson has described his academic
experience there as tumultuous. In spite of his distaste for the mandatory ROTC train-
ing at the University of Nebraska, Wilson was a sharp student of anthropology and
art history, which underscored his horrifi c images with subtle moral tales and astute
refl ections of contemporary society and civilization.
After graduating from UNL, Wilson fl ed Lincoln for a short stay in New York. He
then moved to Lawrence, Kansas, and began doing a series of full-page drawings for
Grist , a literary magazine published and edited by John Fowler. On a trip to San Fran-
cisco to visit Charles Plymell, in 1968, Wilson met Robert Crumb , who was in the
midst of printing the fi rst issue of Zap Comix. Wilson showed Crumb his artwork,
which Crumb described as “something like I’d never seen before, anywhere, the level of
mayhem, violence, dismemberment, naked women, loose body parts, huge, obscene sex
organs, a nightmare vision of hell-on-Earth never so graphically illustrated in the history
of art!” Crumb expanded Zap to include Wilson, with his premiere of the Checkered
Demon in Zap Comix #2.
In addition to his contribution to the Zap collective that also included Spain
Rodriguez, Robert Williams, and Rick Griffi n, Wilson published his own titles such as
Pork , Snatch , and Feltch. He also played in a blues band called Yukon Pete and the Muff
Divers. Wilson’s art continued to contain lurid degeneracy, tempered with dark humor.
Wilson’s signature style is to pack every inch of space packed with action and crazy
details. His artwork is said to have even off ended Harvey Kurtzman , who was none-
theless drawn to it. Th ough certainly controversial, Wilson has avoided some of the
criticisms directed towards many of his contemporaries for their portrayal of women, as
many consider him to be an equal opportunity sadist.
Wilson has illustrated the books of William S. Burroughs, and created a volume of
children’s fairy tales, Wilson’s Grimm. He continued to produce comics, watercolors,
and book illustrations until he suff ered a severe brain injury in 2008. After attending a
