The Original Art of Basil Wolverton: From the Collection of Glenn Bray
Wolverton was perhaps the most distinctively eccentric artist ever to work in mainstream comic books. The obsessive detail of his singular approach—loopy, broadly exaggerated figures given realism and weight through the use of heavy stippling—led LIFE magazine to dub it the “spaghetti-and-meatballs school of design.” Although zany humor strips like Powerhouse Pepper are his best-known stuff, his lesser-known, serious efforts, such as the superhero-science fiction hybrid Spacehawk, possess a primitive, elemental dynamism. Wolverton achieved a career breakthrough in 1946 by winning a contest to depict the world’s ugliest woman for the Li’l Abner newspaper strip, which led to similar commissions for MAD and other publications. In the 1950s, he produced characteristically idiosyncratic biblical illustrations, including a chilling interpretation of the Revelation. This lavish mounting of Wolverton’s decidedly lowbrow art accompanies an exhibition drawn from the collections of Glenn Bray, who befriended the artist late in his life. It emphasizes individual illustrations at the expense of his comic-strip work; may a volume focusing on that other aspect of his career soon follow. --Gordon Flagg