Another great Arf book for 2008, and it features one of the greatest comickers of all: Milt Gross! The Gross-ness starts off with a stunning cover painting done in the 1930s but, as they say, ripped from today’s headlines. It’s all about immigration: Uncle Sam grinds up a sea of immigrants and out come… classic comic strip characters!
Milt Gross drew a 1920s comic that left the last panel blank for aspiring cartoonists. Editor Craig Yoe drafted a who’s who of contemporary cartoonists to complete Gross’s unfinished masterpieces. Art Spiegelman, Seymour Chwast, Patrick McDonnell, Mort Walker, R. Crumb, Bil Keane, Johnny Ryan, Jaime Hernandez, Mike Mignola, Bill Griffith, Kaz, Gene Deitch, Joost Swarte and a dozen more cartooning celebrities contribute art especially done for this Arf Happening!
The Arf books are famed for unearthing unknown Old Skool cartoonist geniuses. Comic Arf showcases the brilliant Dudley Fisher who amazingly drew crowded scenes all from a bird’s eye view. And Arch Dale is another unsung genius getting his due with his Smurfs-meet-Dr. Seuss characters, the Doo-Dads, who populated Canadian comic strips 75 years ago.
Arf also highlights unusual work from recognized masters. Walt Kelly, famed for his Pogo strip, did a surreal nightmarish strip for children presented in all its glory in this latest Arf tome. Amongst all this fun, Comic Arf is also proud to present a hard-hitting chapter this volume entitled “The 15 Most Powerful Anti-War Cartoons of History,” drawing from every major conflict of the last 200 years.
All this and much more, from 1950s devilish horror comics to cartoonist portraits by Gary Panter and Mitch O’Connell.
Download an EXCLUSIVE 20-page PDF excerpt (4.1 MB), with nifty sample pages from almost every section of the book.
"Readers will find this book doing strange and wonderful things to their minds. An elegantly designed, lovingly printed anthology." – Publishers Weekly
"No matter how hardcore a comics enthusiast you might be, there's a lot of weird stuff in these volumes that you should see, that you would want to see... I doubt you'll be disappointed, and you just might be amazed." – ComicMix
"When is an anthology not an anthology? Yoe's quirky collections bring together multitudes of art styles — clips, whole stories, paintings from well known and obscure comics/non-comics artists of all styles and eras, usually with some underlying theme, but Yoe isn't really interested in traditional anthology. ARF! is instead artifact, anthology as collage, and Yoe doesn't try to edit so much as create an experience. Experience it." – Comic Book Resources
"A series of attractive and engaging books exploring — with a scholar's thoroughness and a fanboy's passion — the surprising ways in which comic books and strips have leaked into the wider culture, particularly high culture... Brilliant." – Boston Globe
"Sublime." – Brett Warnock
"I’ve been an unabashed admirer of these books since the first volume came out, but I think Comic Arf may be the best one in the series yet... turning the pages I was in awe of the richness and variety of material placed before me. In his Arf books, Yoe shows us time and again just how much greatness lies buried beneath the surface of what we consider to be the Official History of Comics in the 20th Century. I’m very grateful that he’s unearthing work like this for our modern eyes and hope he keeps doing so for some time to come." – Newsarama
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