Big news in Arf Land! Debuting on Mother’s Day, May 13th, will be the sure to be popular Arf Lover’s Blog reality show: AMERICA’S TOP TOON-A-MILF-BATTLE OF THE CARTOON MOMS! You Arf Lovers will have the exciting opportunity to vote on your favorite determining AMERICA’S TOP TOON-A-MILF!!! Can you stand the anticipation?!? Spread the word and toon in Mother’s Day to see who AMERICA’S TOP TOON-A-MILF contestants are and to start the voting!

Little Doll man, with his big phallic billy club, obviously wants to play a part when the Village People reunite!

This week brought mondo-fantastic news: Brendan Burford was named Comics Editor at King Features Syndicate. Brendan has worked with the late, great Jay Kennedy for the past 7 years and has an incredibly deep love for comics. Brendan especially likes old skool comics and i’ll be interested how that might influence his future choices. Brendan edits and publishes a beautiful, compelling small press publication, Syncopated Comics. Syncopated, “the comics reportage anthology” features Brendan’s own wonderful comics and the likes of Drawn.ca’s talented John Martz.

Brendan Burford

In researching the chapter of images of people reading comics for the soon-available Arf Forum book I unearthed this childhood photo of Brendan. It captures Brendan’s dad helping the young Brendan with his homework. Brendan’s Old Man seems to be saying, “If Brendan doesn’t pay attention and master this Math he’ll NEVER have a future career!”

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The first chapter of the first Arf book, Modern Arf, had a opening chapter on Artists and Models. I’m continually finding more cartoons that maybe could have been in that popular chapter. So I’m happy to share them with the Arf Lovers on the blog. The ones today are from the 1930s and 40s and are from some of the great gag cartooners of the day. Enjoy.

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Wonder Woman you bitch!

Doll Man is a Golden Age comic book I feature every Monday. Dollman’s covers are always loaded with phallic symbols and general kinkiness. Don’t ax me about this hatchet job and the politically incorrect “Redskins”. Just enjoy.

Just found this old sketch book while doing some Spring cleaning. It was done in 1999 when we took the YOE! Studio staff to London for funsies for a few days. It was an inspiring vacation with lots of good times and i really like the doodles. Believe me there’s other dreadful sketch books of mine that I absolutely hate. So it goes…

A Jack Kirby Museum-how cool is THAT!? The people involved are dedicated, talented and visionary-just like Jack! The board of trustees are John Morrow, publisher of The Jack Kirby Collector, Jack and Roz Kirby’s own daughter, Lisa and Randolph Hoppe. I quizzed Randolph (the purple guy above) recently for The Arf Lover’s Blog…

1. *WOW*, is running the Jack Kirby Museum your DAY job? “Museum and Research Center” sounds so high falutin’, what the heck are you trying
to do with this?The Museum’s almost-a-year-long existence has been a good one. Membership is growing. The Catalogue Raisonné is going to be an amazing web resource, and we hope our recently-announced digital archive will support scholarly and historical efforts for years to come. We’re also aiming to hang exhibits around the world. We’ve got Blogs! Discussion groups! And more! Point your browsers at http://kirbymuseum.org and join us, folks. Get a cool Kirby poster!

If I could spend more of my working days educating the world about Jack Kirby’s work, I’d be very happy. ‘Til then, I’m a cartoonist who makes a living as a designer of web sites and print graphics.

Jack’s pencil work from page 14 of 1976′s 2001: A Space Odyssey #1.
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2. Who’s your favorite comic book artist?

What are you, a wise guy?

Jack Kirby

3. Ok, Jack Kirby was a fair artist, but he really didn’t make much of a contribution to comic books. Comment?

His development of dynamic action in comic book storytelling alone would be enough of a contribution. Add to that the entertainment of millions via the imaginative stories he and Stan Lee told through the end of the 1960s. So many of the properties he created, whether with Joe Simon, with Stan Lee, or on his own, continue to entertain people world-wide. Not bad for a guy who often said his job was “to sell magazines”.

Jack Kirby portrait from Modern Arf by David Cowles.

4.What’s up with Devil Dinosaur?

He and Moon-Boy haven’t spoken for a few years now. Devil’s hoping to land the third male lead in Jurassic Park IV, having just finished mocap work for The Land Before Time 3-D: This Time It’s Personal.

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I’ve lent the original art to the above page where the Lee/Kirby monster Fin Fang Foom comes life to MoCCA. It’s for their current not-to-be-missed Stan Lee exhibit. The Kirby Museum was a co-sponsor of the exhibit.

5. Finally, the question on every fan’s mind, who would win in a fight, Jack Kirby or Cathy Guisewite?

Mr. Kirby would not have fought a lady.

Good answer, Randolph! Thanks for your time and good luck with this wonderful endeavor!

Jack Kirby comic from Modern Arf.

The amazing Kubist Kirby story above is reprinted from the original art in its entirety in Modern Arf.

(click here to order Modern Arf)

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The other page from the above story will be in Clean Cartoonists’ Dirty Drawings.

Click here to order Clean Cartoonists’ Dirty Drawings

One last bonus for your enjoyment, Arf Lover: here’s the illustration Jack Kirby did for my book, The Art of Mickey Mouse…

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Wow. We’ve lost two comics greats so close. First B.C.’s Johnny Hart and now Hart’s co-creator of The Wizard of ID, Brant Parker. In remembrance I thought I’d share a couple of photos of Johnny and Brant together from the Arf-chives and the first strips by the team. The first photo is the duo working on The Wizard. The second is a publicity shot where they “seek inspiration for their medieval mirth beneath a thirteenth century fountain at the Cloisters in New York’s Fort Tyron Park.”

(Brant Parker and Johnny Hart)

(Johnny and Brant)

Below are the first six The Wizard of ID strips.

(click for a slide show of Wizard of Id comics)

Arf Lover Dave B. sent this WWWW video in and said “This brought tears to my eyes”. It’s not clear if thse are tears of joy-or of laughter. Seems this Lynda Carter look-a-like is trying to get the starring role for the upcoming Wonder Woman movie so she financed and acted with her theater pals in this audition.