(click For a closer look)

Above is my favorite piece of original art in my collection. It’s the first thing i posted on the Arf Lovers Blog, it’s the cover of the next Arf book, Comic Arf. It’s this painting by Milt Gross titled “The Melting Pot-A Gross Exaggeration”. With it’s “Right Kind of Immigrants” theme it is, as they say, “ripped from today’s headlines”. The Norman Rockwell Museum borrowed this painting for an exhibit they just opened on Graphic Novels so if you want to see it up close and personal go there. (They borrowed, too, my signed editions of He Done Her Wrong, the seminal graphic novel by Gross that Fantagraphics recently re-issued with an introduction by moi).

I thought it’d be fun to make this piece of art into a contest. Send in to yoecomix(at)hotmail(dot) com a list of the mames of all the “Useful American Citizens” that you can identify coming out of Uncle Sam’s meat grinder. At the end of this week I’ll put all the names of the Arf Lovers with the most correct guesses (you don’t have to know them all, just tie with whoever gets the most correct answers) in a beanie and draw out 3 names. The first name gets an Arf book of their choice, Modern Arf, Arf Museum, Arf Forum or the upcoming Comic Arf. The 2nd winner gets Clean Cartoonist’s Dirty Drawings the paperback edition, the third runner-up gets a copy of Weird But True Toon Factoids. All of the books will be signed. The decisions of Judge Parker is final! Send in your guesses soon to yoecomix(at)hotmail(dot)com. Employees of Yoe! Studio, wives, ex-wives, lovers and people who owe me money are ineligible. If you have won the Lottery in the past 30 days you really should be BUYING my books no entering this little pissant contest). Good luck, Arf Lover!