The Checkered Demon is a fictional character

Fictional character

A character is the representation of a person in a narrative work of art . Derived from the ancient Greek word kharaktêr , the earliest use in English, in this sense, dates from the Restoration, although it became widely used after its appearance in Tom Jones in 1749. From this, the sense of...

 created by S. Clay Wilson

S. Clay Wilson

S. Clay Wilson is an American underground cartoonist and central figure in the underground comix movement. Wilson is known for aggressively violent and sexually explicit panoramas of "lowlife," often depicting the wild escapades of pirates and bikers. He was an early contributor to Zap Comix,...

, one of the leading underground comix

Underground comix

Underground comix are small press or self-published comic books which are often socially relevant or satirical in nature. They differ from mainstream comics in depicting content forbidden to mainstream publications by the Comics Code Authority, including explicit drug use, sexuality and violence...

 artists of the 1960s and a contemporary of Robert Crumb

Robert Crumb

Robert Dennis Crumb —known as Robert Crumb and R. Crumb—is an American artist, illustrator, and musician recognized for the distinctive style of his drawings and his critical, satirical, subversive view of the American mainstream.Crumb was a founder of the underground comix movement and is regarded...

.
The Demon debuted in Zap Comix

Zap Comix

Zap Comix is the best-known and one of the most popular of the underground comics that emerged as part of the youth counterculture of the late 1960s. While not believed to be the first underground comic to have been published, Zap is considered to mark the beginning of the "underground comix"...

#2, in 1968.

Fictional character history

A portly, shirtless being generally seen wearing checkered pants, the Demon is Wilson's hero, and is frequently called upon to kill the various demented bikers, pirates, and rapists who populate Wilson's universe. The Demon is unbeatable in combat, but prefers to copulate with rapacious women—such as Star-Eyed Stella, Ruby the Dyke, or Lady Coozette—or to sit around drinking Tree Frog beer. After the run of Zap, the Demon frequently appeared in Crumb's Weirdo

Weirdo

Weirdo was a magazine-sized comics anthology created by Robert Crumb and published by Last Gasp from 1981 to 1993.Weirdo served as a "low art" counterpoint to its contemporary highbrow RAW...

magazine, as well as in Wilson's own comics, such as Pork, and the Demon's own title, of which only 3 issues appeared.

Although the Demon is generally shown as having red skin and black and white checkered pants in color illustrations, Wilson has claimed that the character can actually make himself any color.

A large number of Checkered Demon stories were collected in the book The Checkered Demon Anthology, Volume 1, published by Last Gasp

Last Gasp

Last Gasp is a book and underground comix publisher and distributor based in San Francisco, California.- History :Founded in 1970 by Ron Turner to publish the ecologically-themed comics magazine Slow Death Funnies, followed by the all-female anthology It Ain't Me Babe, Last Gasp soon became a major...

. It is rumored that Wilson's inspiration for the Checkered Demon was artist and friend Alfredo Arreguin.