King Terry

King Terry aka Mista Gonzo aka Terry Johnson aka Terry Yamura aka Teruhiko Yumura is the master of heta-uma, the bad/good graphic style he pioneered in the early 1970s. Pre-punk and post-hippy, Terry embraced production defects, street scrawls, and technical incompetence and made them his own. By creating popular graphics in a style that was "technically" bad but sensually and conceptually successful, he rebelled against perfection and the glossy sheen on Japanese culture. Beginning with comics and illustration, Terry engineered a heta-uma revolution and influenced a generation of artists in the process, including Takashi Nemoto and Yoshikazu Ebisu. His work has appeared everywhere from the high avant garde comics anthology Garo to Sony billboards. He continues to dominate Japanese graphic media whether you like it or not.