BY LYNN BURTON
It’s hard to tell exactly how many Aspen Wall Posters Hunter Thompson and Tom Benton produced. The bibliography in The Great Shark Hunt says there were eight wall posters. The count gets confusing though, because Wall Poster No. 7, Thompson refers to a confiscated issue as “Lost Cause Number Six,” whose place was taken by the real No. 5, which was the original Hunter S. Thompson for Sheriff poster. In any case, there were at least six of the things. A brief history follows.
Thompson and Benton apparently produced the Aspen Wall Posters from January 1970 to March 1971, just before Thompson took off for Las Vegas with his Somoan attorney.
The Wall Posters featured Benton’s graphics on one side and Thompson’s writing on the other, and at least two were suitable for framing (or wall hanging): Aspen Wall Poster No. 3, which featured a gigantic flock of sheep on a mountain road, and the aforementioned No. 5, the Hunted S. Thompson for Sheriff poster. In an interview with this reporter conducted with Benton in 1987, he said the local newspaper wasn’t covering local issues the way it should be, so he and Thompson started the Wall Posters to have a voice and “just to have our fun.”
AWP No. 4, which folded in half to open up into four parts, also featured the Jilly photograph and helped to usher in the end of this short journalistic era.
The problem with No. 4 from a distribution stand point, is that it got the cops involved in an unwanted law enforcement capacity. You see, Benton and Thompson enlisted gangs of kids to sell the Wall Posters on the streets as soon as they rolled off the press. Wall Poster No. 4, however, featured the naked body of Jilly. “So, we got a call from the police chief,” Benton said in a 1987 Carbondale Valley Journal article.
“He said he’d received some calls from mothers because we had kids selling pornography on the streets and we just had to stop this.” As for other sales outlets, “This one is the one that ruined that,” he said. Wall Poster No. 4 presented another problem as well. Namely, the Boulder printer refused to print it due to the controversial nature of the cover, which featured rifle cross-hairs on a brain with the under caption “The American Dream.” The printer eventually printed No. 4, but not before the press boys bled out a recognizable image on the cover.
The original Wall Poster No. 5 never even made it into the country. That one featured Richard Nixon’s Time Magazine cover photo, but with blood dripping from the corners of his mouth and swastikas in his white eyes. “It proved to be absolutely unprintable not only in Aspen, but everywhere else in this country,” Thompson wrote in Wall Poster No. 7. “Then, when the bastard was finally printed (in Canada), the whole press run was seized by hired thugs who claimed to be agents of the Royal Canadian Mounties… all six were armed.”
Aspen Wall Poster No. 1 was an instant success, and in AWP No. 2 Thompson promised “We will, of course, push our luck.”
Aspen Wall Poster No. 7 was probably the last one, although this cannot be confirmed as of press time. The front of No. 7 carried the headline “Fat City USA” and the graphics blended elements of the American flag, dollar signs and what appears to be a rifle.
So, there you go. A brief history of the Aspen Wall Posters, although we still don’t know if there were six, seven, or eight of the suckers. Maybe someone will step forward with new information.
