Well, no, I’m not there, I’m in Washington. But, here’s some material I picked up at the Angouleme, France comics festival. Tomorrow I’ll have a few more strips by Seron PLUS a drawing he did for me.

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There’s nothing better, more inspiring, than seeing doodles by master artists. Alex Toth is a master and an incessant doodler on his correspondence to fans. One fan has had an amazing 25 year correspondence with Toth and the drawings and rants and insights Alex penned are being collected in an exciting book from Octopus Press. Here’s the cover and a few sneek peeks. Got this info, BTW, from my pal Heidi MacDonald’s blog, The Beat.

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Speaking of Alex’s doodles and postcards, as we have been, here’s something Alex sent me a while back with some suggestions to change the name of my studio from YOE! Studio…

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I am Bob Laughlin’s step-daughter Nancy. Jim Keefe sent along what you did for Bob on your blog (below-Craig). Thank you so much, it brought tears to my eyes to read his page drew for you that I had never even seen…..I’m not sure my Mom would even remember it. Bob was such a dear, sweet man and so talented. He suffered so in the past eleven years. He is now in peace thankfully.

Because of people like you he will be remembered. Thank you.

-Nancy MacDowell Kaye

I also got a nice note from Bob’s grandson Jim Bardes. Nancy and Jim and Arf Lovers here’s some of Bob’s wonderful strips from a book he sent me with this note “…here’s some more “K -an’ K” for you. This was never published in a book but it’s the last 50 strips I did + I just xeroxed 25 copies a while ago. You should get one as I appreciate your efforts for the “Kats”.” Click on the cover of Bob’s handmade book below for a little slide show.

(click for a slideshow of Kitz ‘n’ Katz comics)

Believe it or I had a little extra time and looked at your blog today. It’s swell. I’ll view it regularly now. I noticed the postcard you did. It is also swell.

-David Scroggy/Dark Horse Comics

Thanks, David. Letters like yours makes me swell with pride. Here’s the postcard I did for National Postcard Week LAST year. It was inspired by all the early 1900s Alfred E. Nueman-esque postcards I featured in Modern Arf. Always glad to hear from Arf Lovers, write me at yoecomix (at) hotmail (dot) com.

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Had the thrill of a lifetime hearing David Levine talk last night at an National Cartoonist Society gathering.. Best Caricaturist. Ever. Actually I had met Mr. Levine once before back in 2000 when he did the above self portrait for me. It’s signed “D. Levine (dot) Commie-ha! David spoke of his early inspirations, Will Eisner and Walt Disney. He sent Disney some drawings when he was a kid and Disney sent him a letter offering him a job. David wrote back “But, I’m only 9 years old.” The National Cartoonist Society Connecticut chapter was also astounded to see Levine’s breathtaking fine art paintings of Coney Island scenes. David was accompanied by his son, daughter-in-law and wife Kathy. Kathy is a strikingly beautiful woman. When David showed a painting of her it took everyone’s breath away but he quickly said, “she’s more than her beauty”. Bet he got lucky when he got home. I sure was lucky to have heard my hero and lucky to see more of his incredible artistry.

David Levine and myself at the NCS dinner. I’m the good looking one.

Click on this David Levine self-caricature below to see some of David’s wonderful caricatures. I’ve chosen some famous artists (including Picasso, whose own cartoons are featured in the upcoming Arf Museum) rather than the authors and politicos we usually see by him. Enjoy, Arf Lovers!

(click for a slideshow of Levine’s caricatures)

Hotwire Comix and Capers is a total socially misfit new anthology from Fantagraphics edited by bad-ass cartoonist Glenn Head. Glenn’s the kind of guy that would wear a long-sleeve black shirt and hoodlum sunglasses when he introduces his pinked-out tow-headed pixie daughter to Goofy at Disney World. As a contributor to Hotwire I’ll be joining Mr. Head and fellow conspirators at Rocketship in Brooklyn (208 Smith St.) this Friday night at 8:00 for an autograph party. Meaniewhile, I interview the talented and opinionated Glenn for you dear Arf Lovers.

Glenn, daughter and friend.

1. What’s your opinion of the state of comics right now?

The state of comics at the moment is fairly healthy because of the level of enthusiasm…. there are more articles, interviews, and magazine pieces about comics than I can ever remember seeing. People now discuss comics the way they used to discuss film—very seriously. On the one hand this is good—comics deserve it. And it’s about time they shed some of their geeky, fan-boy, silliness. Deconstructing a comic-strip need not be the province of nerdish Poindexters with a lifetime subscription to Comics Journal! On the other hand the seriousness that creeps in when comics are put on a pedestal sometimes threatens to undermine their immediacy…. this is most evident in the current graphic novel trend.

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2. So what’s your opinion of the graphic novel craze, Glenn?

The main benefit is that it’s boosted peoples interest in comics generally, which is helpful. And from an artistic point of view, a 300 page comicbook shouldn’t NOT be an option (to quote Marshall Mchluan “art is whatever you can get away with”). The main problem with the graphic novel (inherent in its claim to being “literature”) is that it seems to distance itself from being a comicbook. In other words; it has ten times more pages, so… it must have ten times the content, ten times the value, ten times the weight (especially in hardcover!) of any comicbook… it seems absurd that people would so easily accept such a quantity=quality gambit, but that’s successful marketing for you…

What gets lost in all this, unfortunately, are some basic disciplines of comicbook art/storytelling. Boiling it down, simplifying, getting to the gist, are traded in for more everything…cinematic effects, silent panels ad infinitum, and, often enough; padding the story out-stretching it. Along with all this comes the idea that “serious” subject matter is more valid than”comic” material. This is not to say that ANY subject matter is off limits, of course…

However, a Bazooka Joe comic strip isn’t junk because it’s wrapped around a piece of 2 cent bubblegum, any more than a graphic novel is literature, just because it sells for $24.95 at Barnes and Noble. (Full disclosure: YOE! Studio creates the Bazooka Joe comics-C.Y.)

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3. What do you look for in a comic strip/comicbook?

I look for two things in a comic. The first and most important; I want to be transported. What i want from the artist is to be taken into a perfect world. That artists world can be dangerous, violent, funny, serious, lighthearted, or out-of-control. It can even be badly drawn. But it has to be HIS (or hers) alone. It can be lots of things (though hopefully not sane, there’s too much of that in everyday reality), but I have to believe it’s real… believe that I could walk around in it, and feel those characters next to me, breathing. This is the artists own world, not mine, but it must have its own rules, its own reality, its own sense of how things work, i.e.; it’s own internal logic…

The second thing i look for, Craig, may sound a little odd, but it’s my own personal taste. In a comic, i want to see something that approximates a state of psychotic terror-in a fun way! Looking at some of the great comic strips of the 20th century, there is an absurdist quality about them that is acceptable only because we see it on the printed page. The world of Dick Tracy, Popeye, or even Charlie Brown would be terrifying if we saw anything like it in real life, and not just because of the grotesquerie involved. But also because of the violent energy and loathing just underneath the surface of every panel in these strips. Each of these strips suceeds in conveying the terror of what it means to be alive…

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And when I say terror I don’t mean the obvious kind (like say a horror comic, which is nearly always just funny), but rather; some of Harvey Kurtzmans best work. In “Corpse on the Imjin” (Two Fisted Tales, 1950′s), he evokes an elemental state that captures what mortal, hand-to-hand combat must have felt like. The life and death struggle here, between 2 soldiers is given an immediacy that no movie has ever achieved. This is partly because of the energy of Kurtzmans brushwork, and the rythym of the text. But it’s also thanks to the medium itself. Unlike a movie (“Saving Private Ryan”), where the experience is communal, a comicbook is meant to be read by one person at a time….. and that one person will experience being locked in a life and death struggle to survive.Kurtzman achieved a different kind of terror when collaborating with Will Elder on MAD. The all-out insanity of EVERYTHING happening at once in some of those panels (the violence in “Starchie”- maybe the 1st underground comic!) is hysterical in every sense of the word. terrifyingly so.Again, this terror is acceptable, even engaging on the printed page. This is what i long for in a comicbook—to see something that feels like an insane death-rattle/orgasm in cartoon form. I want it to hurt; to really feel the excitement of an out-of-control rollercoaster on methamphetamines…I want a near-death experience from comics, not something safe!

4. What was it that got you interested in putting together Hotwire?

I had been away from comics for a little while after being involved with various titles in the 1990′s (these comicbooks; Bad News, Snake Eyes, Zero-Zero were mostly anthologies-Snake Eyes I edited for 3 issues, with cartoonist kaz) I really like the anthology format, I like the mix of different cartooning styles banging into each other. (In art school I was around art spiegelman during the RAW magazine days and seeing the way he edited that was an influence. He played hardball…if tough decisions have to made he made them. He was also very adamant in his belief that editing is an art form….he took the whole thing very seriously.)When I got back into drawing comics again recently I looked around to see what was up in the anthology comics scene.

I was happy to see that there were several titles out there, great production, beautiful printing; very deluxe presentation. As exciting as these titles were, I noticed they were definitely headed in a different direction from what i wanted to see. This in itself was good news. It meant there was an opening for something different. Hotwire looks completely unlike anything else that’s out there right now.I find this odd, I don’t see myself as any kind of avant garde editor. what I think has happened is comics have developed (mutated) into various art genres that have (sometimes) very little to do with comics. So with a book like Hotwire it’s actually kind of striking, because it’s so much ABOUT comics. Splash pages. Gag panels. Balloonheads. Switchblades. Anti-social behavior…”Hey kids!! Comics don’t have to be good for you anymore!!”

5. How would you describe your aesthetic for Hotwire?

Basically i’m looking for what I once felt years back when I first came across a great funny book. A sense of pure fun and visceral excitement. As editor I think I was fortunate enough to achieve this with Hotwire. From the primary colors kick of Michael Kupperman”s great pulp cover to the seediness of Tim Lane’s Coney Island wraparound inside covers.There’s also a gleeful criminality in much of what appears here, from my own strips (“Mindless Thrills!” and “Switchblade Shenanigans!”) to Mack Whites conspiracy capers of 2 (only 2?) Lee Harvey Oswalds. Crime, in fact seems to take many forms in Hotwire. There’s the historical (Mike Wartella’s “Rasputin”), the hick (Doug Allen’s “Hotrod Hillbillies”), Craig there’s your psychedelic fold-out “Crime Does Not Pay”)…

Of course there’s always Tony Millionare’s good old-fashioned child slaughter…hmmm maybe were seeing a pattern energe! But in fact this isn’t a crime comic. Crime is simply one element of the raging id, unleashed thru-out the pages of Hotwire. Different individual cartoon voices screeching in a mad cacophony of violent hilarity, that somehow, against the odds, manages to harmonize! I have to point out though, that Hotwire is much more than mayhem.

Comics have always had great untapped potential for pathos and human drama, and two of the longer pieces in here really deliver. Carol Swain’s “Family Circus” explores the loneliness and alienation of growing up as a depressed teenager in Scotland. Here a visit from a an aging circus troup makes life seem even more hopeless. And Tim Lane’s “The Drive Home” shows what violence and crazy behavior leave behind in their wake…broken homes, bitterness, and remorse. Here violence isn’t ka-pow heroics or anything fun. It’s fueled by self-loathing, despair, and loneliness. It’s not a way up. It’s just destruction.The other thing that Hotwire brings to comix is a sense of immediacy. Every strip in this comic jumps off the page right at the viewer, who unwarily, is taken right into that artists world. The juxtaposition of different styles going up against each other at high speeds delivers a violent shock to even the most jaded retinas…it puts the kicks back in comics!

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Bob Laughlin passed away Sunday. Bob was one of those cartoonists who was as good as it gets—but labored in pretty much obscurity. Bob worked on the Monty Hale comic book, had his own strip Cuffy and assisted on the inking of Heathcliff. But, it all came together on his brilliantly genius creation Kitz -n’ Katz, the sublime strips about a black "kat" and a white "kat" who didn’t know themselves which was who, so to speak. Probably too artsy,too gentle, too charming, too creative, too surreal, too cute, too poetic, too sophisticated, too silly, too sweet all together to find a broad audience the feline’s adventures appeared in only a half dozen or so hand-bound publications and about the same number of an Eclipse Comics series.

Patrick McDonnell tells me how sweet and self-effacing Bob himself was. Bob resisted Patrick’s urgings to join the National Cartoonist Society because he didn’t feel he was worthy. The truth was that with Kitz -n’ Katz Bob’s work transcended 99% of his fellow cartoonists work.

A memorial service will be held Friday, May 19th at 2:00 at the Munson-Lovetree Funeral Home 235 Main Str. Southbury, CT.

Rube Goldberg is featured in the next Arf book, Arf Museum, with many pages of his wild drawings of wacky modernistic sculptures. Rube writes about these sculpts in a 1930s article I reprint and there’s even an unpublished drawing of one and an unpublished self portrait, too. (Not to mention a great contemporary portrait done especially for Arf of Rube by the great Gary Taxali).

Today in 1915 is the day Rube Goldberg’s hilarious character Boob McNutt debuted in the comic pages. For the sake of Arf Lovers who might be confused I hereby present the difference between a “Boob” and “Boob McNutt”. Don’t thank me.

Boob.	Boob McNutt.

Here’s my postcard for the event featuring the character I came up with to help celebrate-Penny Postcard! Click below to see Penny in All Her Glory in the All Together.

The “divided back” pun is understandable for postcard geeks. Congress passed a law in 1907 that publishers could “divide” the back and the address could be on the right hand side.

Previously only the address and a 1-cent stamp could be on the back. The message had to share the front with the art so the art space sufffered. The “divided back” changed this and the postcard really took off. And now this is a way for postcard collectors to date their finds, pre-divided backs and post-divided backs.

The phrase “a penny for your thoughts” was a reference to the cost of postage to send your postcard message. Would love your thoughts on what you think of my card which was done for the Taconic Postcard Club, Susan Hack-Lane, my pal and Arf Lover, is the president. Thanks, Susan!

A Special Message From Craig Yoe’s Mother:

Please don’t buy Craig’s awful Arf books! These books have naughty pictures and other items of questionable taste in them that make me ashamed to call Craig my son. I burned his comic books when he went to college and I thought that would be the end of it. I had so much hoped that Craig would follow in his father’s footsteps and become a proctologist, something that I could be proud to tell my friends about. Now he sits around drawing funny pictures instead of having a real job. So, please, I beg of you not to buy these Arf books, it only encourages Craig to produce more such filth.

Most sincerely,
Betty Yoe

Craig replies:
Screw you, Mom! I dig my books the most to say the least and you can’t make me stop doing them! In fact, speaking of the next book and mothers here’s a preview from Arf Museum where I compare Mamma Katzenjammer with Picasso’s portrait of Gertrude Stein. In the Picasso chapter I talk about how Pablo was, according to Stein, a big Katzie fan. Listen you old lady , I’m gonna keep coming up with stuff like this cause I like it and all the cool kids do comic books!

And I’m not eating my vegetables, either! I say they’re spinach and I say the hell with it!