FOO! Today is Bill Holman’s Birthday!
Today is the birth date of the guy who represents “Arf†in all its Arfness. If there was ever an Arf poster child it is Bill Holman the creator of the ultimate in cartoon surrealism, the Smokey Stover comic strip. I was privileged to get to become friends with Bill and to interview him in the last years of his life. Bill’s nephew Victor has put together a foo-tastic website devoted to all things Holman.
There was an artist and model cartoon by Bill in Modern Arf and this Spooky strip below is gonna be in Arf Museum in the “Field Trip: Cartoonists Visit the Art Museum†section which is a bunch of strips and cartoons about going to the art museum by Charles Addams, Frank King, Patrick McDonnell, Otto Soglow, Billy Debeck, Chester Gould..and Hugh Hefner (?!).
There is also a gag cartoon by Bill in the Arf Museum “Tattoons†section. There Bill is joined by Dan DeCarlo to T.S. Sullivant. More about the “Tattoons” section including some outtakes in a future Arf Lovers. Meaniewhile here’s Holman’s wild pussy…
One of the future Arfs will have a whole giant section on Bill “Scat†Holman filled with some of the wonderful and rare ephemera he gave me for that purpose.The photo leading off this post is one (wonderful) example. And I’ll reveal the secret Bill shared with me of “Foo”. “Foo” was the term Bill’s term peppered into his strips that eventually became the basis for the name of the group “Foo Fighters”. Speaking of our FAVORITE “Foo Fighter”, Smokey Stover, below is the limited edition statue that YOE! Studio created for our friends at Dark Horse Comics.
— C. Yoe (in the funny papers)
hmm you still didnt really tell us thesecret meaning of foo, just because its the name the foo fighters use it still tells us nothing of what it means. so whats the real secret???