Profile for quister - Little known inspiration to the birth of underground comix

quister aka john is a boy, has been a member since September 20, 2007, has scored 18,158 submissions, giving an average score of 2.45, helping 467 designs get printed.

Jul 23 '09 by quister
24 Comments
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Little known inspiration to the birth of underground comix

Hard to believe this guy was doing his thing in the late 40's and 50's. Mad Magazine's main man from the start, a devout church goer that wished to be remembered for his Bible illustrations.

"The van Gogh of the Gross-Out"
NY Times article

image url

quister on Jul 23 '09 at 8:40pm

Arthur Crumb must have gotten some inspiration from this guy, no?

quister on Jul 24 '09 at 3:09pm

quister on Jul 24 '09 at 4:35pm

Hmmm, last blog title was, "Basil Wolverton in NYC", and not one comment. Maybe he's not that well known, so maybe new, more intriguing title will help?

EricDiaz on Jul 24 '09 at 6:31pm

That first one is so good. I didn't know of him but he's got a great style.

ISABOA on Jul 24 '09 at 6:34pm

quister on Jul 23 '09 at 8:40pm

Arthur Crumb must have gotten some inspiration from this guy, no?

yeah - crazy

Kim456 on Jul 24 '09 at 6:38pm

Love his style!

Kim456 on Jul 24 '09 at 6:39pm

a devout church goer that wished to remembered for his Bible illustrations.

hmmm objective fail perhaps

quister on Jul 24 '09 at 7:08pm

Yeah Kim, his Biblical stuff was good but routine, his Mad stuff was distinctive, and we're all hard wired to notice/appreciate the un-norm. Great skills though, having no rapidographs, markers, and such. Probably worked on negative film using a razor blades and opaque media to finish a piece before it got printed. Hard to say though, look at the size of this one.

Kim456 on Jul 24 '09 at 8:16pm

wow!!! Insane detail for such huge works!!!

quister on Jul 24 '09 at 9:30pm

Here's one of his Bible prints, Watch your face, couldn't find a smaller version.

quister on Jul 24 '09 at 9:33pm

Here's a bunch of his work on one site, fun to look through!

Basil Wolverton

ISABOA on Jul 24 '09 at 9:34pm

nice armageddon

quister on Jul 24 '09 at 9:39pm

nice armageddon

Yeah, right!

The guy did have a sense of humor though!

BlameTheSuburbs on Jul 24 '09 at 9:41pm

Those are really awesome and creative. At first I was like "meh", but then I got a closer look, and they are really innovative images. He's totally abstracting from the human form just like so many of those "high" artist dudes. I was looking through some of his other work earlier because I had never heard of him before the NY Times article yesterday. Mostly I like the simpler single image portraits like that first one.

BlameTheSuburbs on Jul 24 '09 at 9:41pm

ohh that last one you just posted is great.

quister on Jul 24 '09 at 10:13pm

Yeah, Blame, amazing stuff considering the time he was doing these. He must have inspired these two at least, maybe more.

Big Daddy Roth

R Crumb

quister on Jul 25 '09 at 1:33pm

His career lasted from 1938 until 1952, after which his illustrations and caricatures extended into such publications as Life, Pageant and MAD magazines. Stylistically, he has been regarded as one of the spiritual grandfathers of underground and alternative comix.

quister on Jul 25 '09 at 6:39pm

quister on Jul 26 '09 at 1:36pm

I just found a bunch of his religious work, scary stuff!

"Longtime aficionados of Basil Wolverton are aware that he is somewhat of a paradox. On the one hand he was a Christian minister - quiet, humble, generous to a fault - morally and socially conservative - always ready with a word of encouragement or humor. On the other hand, he created some of the most terrifying religious art since Hieronymus Bosch."

religious art here

9 days later

quister on Aug 04 '09 at 9:53pm

In case you missed this blog, just giving you another chance to get to view the work of this little known and rarely cited inspiration of many of the works we see today. "Sin City" comes to mind!

142 days later