The Checkered Demon

The Checkered Demon is a crude, anarchic imp from S. Clay Wilson's underground comix work — a leering, brawling devil figure who embodies the transgressive, no-holds-barred spirit of the San Francisco underground comix scene.

A genuine artifact of the underground comix underground, The Checkered Demon made their Bronze Age entrance in 1976 courtesy of Last Gasp — that irreverent San Francisco publisher that gave voice to a whole generation of boundary-pushing cartoonists. Debuting in Arcade the Comics Revue and turning up across titles like Weirdo, Kingdom of Evil, and Fire Sale, this character inhabits a world populated by the likes of DiDi Glitz, Wonder Wart-hog, and the work of Robert Crumb and Aline Kominsky-Crumb — as gloriously weird a neighborhood as comics has ever produced. The fact that The Checkered Demon's presence stretches across roughly four decades, from 1976 all the way to 2016, speaks to a stubborn, cult staying power that the underground comix scene rewards like no other corner of the medium. For collectors and historians of alternative comics, this is exactly the kind of character whose modest appearance count only deepens the intrigue.