Another week, another amazing book from Craig Yoe. And another enthusiastic plug from me, because these are truly great books. This time Yoe has mined the hundreds of anonymous funny-animal kids comics of the 1940s and 50s (and beyond) to discover pure cartoon gold from animator/cartoonists like Walt Kelly, Otto Messmer, Jim Tyer, Dan Gordon, Jack Bradbury, Howard Post, Ken Hultgren and others.
This is not just some hodge-podge of old comic book stories, but a carefully curated set of lost kid-centric comics ranging from fairy-tale fables to sheer surreal nonsense – each page an unknown gem, created by an otherwise notable comic book legend. If you haven’t seen these vintage children’s comics created by Jules Feiffer, Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, Frank Frazetta, and Dr. Seuss – I hadn’t – here they are in one beautiful full color volume. Other artists represented include Harvey Kurtzman, John Stanley, Carl Barks, Vince Fago, Dan DeCarlo, Basil Wolverton, Wally Wood, Mort Walker, Mad’s Dave Berg and of course Milt Gross. That’s a helluva who’s who of funny folks. There’s probably a dozen others I forgot to mention and should have (like Milt Stein, Al Hubbard, George Carlson… and on and on).

The Golden Collection of Klassic Krazy Kool Kids’ Komics. Even if you collect this stuff (like I do), this hardcover compilation is well worth having just to have all these geniuses collected in one convenient place. Mo Willems provides a foreword to this magnificent package of non-stop fun. Amazon has it listed for $23. 09—a steal!

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