Comic Arf120 pages, color, softcover
Language: English
Fantagraphics, 2008
ISBN: 978-1-56097-912-8
This is the fourth volume of Craig Joes ongoing series of books examining "the unholy marriage of art + comics". As with the previous volumes, this is a picture-heavy publication where Yoe shows strange and unusual images from the pen of comics artists, with a short introductory text about the creators. This is in other words far from most books about comics, which tends to be text-oriented and have more or less sparse illustrations; an anomaly since comics is an art form that heavily rely on images.
Anyway, Yoe's Arf-books are clearly works of love, and his eccentric personality (I have had the privilege of meeting him many times at various comics festivals around the world) shines through beautifully in the often very personal comments, the artistic design of the books, the comics he creates for the books etc. These are not the end all book(s) on the subject of comics and art, but taken together they show an interesting array of strange and wonderful drawn art that mostly cannot be found in print anywhere else. Yoe seems to be a master at digging forth long forgotten works of old cartoonists and every new volume of his Arf-books is going to be devoured by yours truly.
