1:AM interviews Mark Bode, underground comics, tattoo, and spraycan artist. His show is on view now through July 31st at 1:AM Gallery.
Valerie Leavy: I was doing a bit of research about you and according to the interwebs, you’ve lived in Northampton, Oakland, Manhattan, and San Francisco. You’re in the Bay Area now. So where did you grow up?
Mark Bode: I was born in upstate New York, in a small town called Utica. Utica was kind of a boom town in the 20’s and 30’s, kind of a mob town that blew up the city, and then when the mob moved out in the 60’s, 70’s, it kind of deflated. But I remember it being huge, you know, people bustling in the streets and stuff. It’s not quite like that anymore, it’s more of a suburban town.
VL: So, you and your father have had a real influence on visual culture. Is there anything in Utica that is kind of a monument to that? Any graffiti?
MB: Um, the only famous people that came out of Utica were um, Dick Clark and Annette Funicello. And my father.
VL: (laughing) What a legacy.
MB: Um, yeah, so there’s not a whole lot in Utica as far as art and culture and stuff. But I did a mural at the Children’s Museum in Utica about 10 years ago, not sure if it’s still there. But I did a mural inside, you know, for the children. That was the only museum I could get down with at the time. But, maybe things’ll change.
VL: So I read that your Miami Mice comic was wildly successful; in its first year it sold 180,000 copies. What do you think were the factors that led to the widespread popularity of this underground comic?
MB: It was published by an underground comics publisher, Rip Off Press, and they just lived down the street when I came up with that [Miami Mice]. But there was a black & white comics boom that was spurred by the creation of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and that boom was like, Radioactive Black Belt Hamsters and uh-
VL: (laughing) Is that real? Radioactive Black Belt Hamsters?
MB: Yeah, they were real comics, yeah. And everybody was jumpin’ on that bandwagon, tryin’ to get part of that light. And it was, you know, Fish Police, and Hamster Vice, and all these different things. And I came in right at that time and I knew that I wanted to ride that wave. My wife and I were walking through a mall, and we saw a Miami Mice t-shirt and she goes, “Wouldn’t that make a good comic book?” and I was like, “Yeah, it would.” And Miami Vice was huge, it was the biggest thing on TV pretty much. Knowing that you can’t copyright a parody, I knew the Miami Mice t-shirt people were just makin’ money off the shirts and I had a better idea. Well, my wife did actually. And I banged out a comic book in about a month, it was 30 pages. And I didn’t spend much time on the art, I’d just, like, bang it out as quick as I could, get on that wave.
VL: So were you surprised when it was that successful?
MB: Yeah. But we had some warnings, you know, I was hangin’ out at Rip Off Press waiting for the first issue to come in, and we had Chinese speculators calling us.
VL: Wow.
MB: Yeah. And so we knew that something’ was up. And it’s like, Chinese speculators, wow, that’s something. And so the first print run was 40,000. The second issue went to 60,000 and then it went down again to like, 50 or 40. And then it went to 20 on number four. And I called it quits at that point. I didn’t know any better, but 20,000 is still a really nice print run. But I had illusions of grandeur, that I could just dump it, and go do something that was really cool, more Bode-ish, and get those numbers, and since I did that my print run went down to less than 10. So I kinda lost that gamble, but I didn’t wanna be known for creating a parody of a TV show, so I dumped it. But in a year’s time, we sold 180,000 copies. It was a good run, and I got a first taste of a nice day of it as an artist.
VL: Is there a comic or a group of characters that you enjoy illustrating more than the rest, or that you did enjoy even if you don’t do it anymore?
MB: Absolutely. My father’s work is always… I mean, I was brainwashed as a child, you know, my father taught me that these characters were real, before I knew what reality was. When you’re four or five years old, reality is whatever it is.
VL: Oh yeah, you close your eyes and think no one else can see you.
MB: Yeah. The whole world stops. When you close your eyes. And in fact I’ve contemplated that many times. My father said, “Yes, son. Everything DOES stop.” And you know, I thought that his stuff was real, ‘cause he’d show me the comic, and a day later he’d say, “Let’s go to where I saw Cheech last and wait for him,” So as we’re eating lunch, up on the hill waiting for Cheech, I found myself wondering where he was, and he’s like, “Oh, he’s busy, just hasn’t shown up yet. But at least I can show you the drawings from when we hung out.” So I started envisioning the characters coming up the hill. And that’s what he was doing, he was systematically, in a good way, brainwashing me.
