The most recent issue of NSU has, in the "New & Noteworthy" column, a statement from Richard Parks who is producing the new Basil Wolverton set Barflyze: "Barflyze Trading Cards will be the first time in over forty years that Wolverton's work has been represented on a series of trading cards."

Strictly speaking, that isn't true. I know of a couple of sets in recent years that had Woverton cards.

Wolverton's art for the cover of Mad Comics #11 is in the Lime Rock set of Mad Magazine cards. You can almost make it out here:


The 1993 Eclipse "Famous Comic Book Creators Update" set had a card featuring Wolverton.

And the 1995 Comic Images "Golden Age of Comics All-Chromium" set had a card with the cover of Target Comics #7, which had Wolverton artwork.

I realize that Parks was probably trying to say that there hadn't been any entire series of cards with Wolverton art, but I wanted to point out a couple of cards he may have not known about. Wolverton was a great, if under appreciated, artist.

He was an obvious major influence not only on most humor comics artists, but even on the greatest comics writer of all-time, Alan Moore. Basil's work is first-ballot Hall of Fame stuff, for sure.

Actually, none of those are Wolverton trading card series. To the best of my knowledge 'Barflyze' is the first Wolverton trading card series in 40 years (the last Wolverton series, I believe, was in the early/mid 1970s -- Ugly Stickers -- which was basically a reprinting of a 1960s Wolverton series of stickers).