At left, Horror comix artist William Ekgren's psychedelicreepy cover for the April, 1953 issue of Weird Horrors. Ekgren's career is profiled in the third volume of Craig Yoe's terrific Arf Forum comic/art anthology published by our pals at Fantagraphics. This insanely eclectic collection also features George "Krazy Kat" Herriman, Stan Lee, Nancy's Ernie Bushmiller, surrealist Max Ernst, and many other great artists. For samples of the spookier art in the book, see this Monster Brains post. Keep in mind though that the book is utterly genre-defying.)
From the book description:
The third volume of the popular "Arf" series, Arf Forum runs the gamut from Krazy Kat¹s kartoonist George Herriman to heartbreak rocker Elvis, Spider-Man's Stan Lee to New Yorker cartoonist Otto Soglow, Little Nemo's Winsor McCay to silent film star Charlie Chaplin, Nancy's Ernie Bushmiller to Surrealist Max Ernst. The sexy pin-up cover on Arf Forum highlights a feature on historical images of people reading comics: from a young Elvis reading Betty and Veronica on his first tour to a boxer-clad Rock Hudson reading the Sunday funnies. Also ratcheting up the titillation factor is a spread on the sexy cartoons of Italian artist, Kremos. The Arf books have a special fondness for cartoonists doing wacky and surrealistic comics. This Arf features a generous sample of Bill Holman's Smokey Stover, including unpublished rarities. Also in this volume, macabre cartoonist Henry Heath goes devilish in the ongoing "Cartoonists Go To Hell" series. A bona fide super-hero swoops into the pages of Arf when "Captain Marvel Fights The Surrealist Imp" in a classic tale from the Golden Age of Comics; meanwhile, real-life superhero Stan Lee introduces a section devoted to, in Lee's own words, Yoe's own "wacky, weird, wild comics that become Art with a capital 'A'!" And finally, "Yabba Dabba Been Done" examines the caveman and dinosaur cartoons of masters T.S. Sullivant, Winsor McCay and Frederick Opper – all pre-Fred and Wilma Flintstone!
