Arf Museum — Craig Yoe

150 years of great cartooning under one cover.

Arf Museum explores the unholy marriage of art and comics in a stunning array of rare masterpieces, guaranteed to make you "pop-eyed!" With 120 large-format and colorful pages, Arf is a treat for the senses, encompassing a rich treasure trove of images spanning the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries. This iconoclastic tome showcases the gamut of artists, from celebrated innovators to forgotten geniuses.

Featured in this volume: Ten unpublished early 20th century paintings of "the Yellow Kid" by his creator, Richard Felton Outcault; Pablo Picasso's secret cartoon past is revealed; 1950s girlie cartoonist Reamer Keller's never-before-seen banned cartoons; the Gasoline Alley gang, Barney Google, Polly and Her Pals, The Addams Family, and Nancy take a trip to the art museum; "Kink Kong," a section spotlighting ape figures and damsels in distress, from World War I propaganda to the 1933 King Kong movie to "jungle" comic books of the 1940s to present day; contemporary art rebel Coop introduces a section of devilish cartoons by Art Young, the 1920's Commie cartoonist tried for treason; an examination of Rube Goldberg's foray into modern art via his drawings of modernist sculptures that playfully lambaste the beginnings of Modern Art; and a rare and hilarious Goldberg essay from the 1930s, titled "I Am Now A Modern Artist".

Arf Museum has all of this and more, including cartoons by Art Spiegelman, Patrick "Mutts" McDonnell, Ronald Searle, Dan DeCarlo, Gene Deitch, T.S. Sullivant, Maurice Henri and pin-up artist Gil Elvgren. Arf is edited by Craig Yoe, formerly the Creative Director and Vice-President/General Manager of the Muppets and a recipient of many awards, including the Gold Medal from the Society of Illustrators and the Eisner Award. Illustrated throughout in full color and black-and-white