Friday, July 06, 2007


The third volume of the popular "Arf" series, Arf Forum runs the gamut from Krazy Kat¹s kartoonist George Herriman to heartbreak rocker Elvis, Spider-Man's Stan Lee to New Yorker cartoonist Otto Soglow, Little Nemo's Winsor McCay to silent film star Charlie Chaplin, Nancy's Ernie Bushmiller to Surrealist Max Ernst. The sexy pin-up cover on Arf Forum highlights a feature on historical images of people reading comics: from a young Elvis reading Betty and Veronica on his first tour to a boxer-clad Rock Hudson reading the Sunday funnies. Also ratcheting up the titillation factor is a spread on the sexy cartoons of Italian artist, Kremos. The Arf books have a special fondness for cartoonists doing wacky and surrealistic comics.

This Arf features a generous sample of Bill Holman's Smokey Stover, including unpublished rarities. Also in this volume, macabre cartoonist Henry Heath goes devilish in the ongoing "Cartoonists Go To Hell" series. A bona fide super-hero swoops into the pages of Arf when "Captain Marvel Fights The Surrealist Imp" in a classic tale from the Golden Age of Comics; meanwhile, real-life superhero Stan Lee introduces a section devoted to, in Lee's own words, Yoe's own "wacky, weird, wild comics that become Art with a capital 'A'!"

And finally, "Yabba Dabba Been Done" examines the caveman and dinosaur cartoons of masters T.S. Sullivant, Winsor McCay and Frederick Opper — all pre-Fred and Wilma Flintstone! Check out the book on Amazon here.

2 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

I miss him one of a few arab scholars who had Thomas Friedman figured out early on, "the jejune Thomas Friedman" as he called him. While the rest of the arab world were gawking and fawning over him....sad some still do.

9:45 AM  
Blogger Basil Epicurus said...

First of all, you posted this comment in the wrong post...this is the Arf Lounge post.

Second of all, I like Tom Friedman albeit more his understanding of globalization than his political opinions. What part of him do you object to?

I've always wanted to visit Edward Said's tomb in upstate New York.

7:06 PM  

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