I'm just going to rip off Jerry Beck's line from Cartoon Brew about this book: "Another day, another amazing book from Craig Yoe". Actually, I have been anticipating this book quite a lot longer than many of Yoe's other books and perhaps it took longer to come out due to scheduling difficulties or copyright clearances.
Whatever the case, "Krazy Kool Kids Komics" is here, and is an excellent companion piece for Art Spiegelman's "Toon Treasury of Classic Children's Comics" (except still no Harvey...cry). Yoe's book exposes the seamier underside or stranger subjects of "children's comics", in that there are for more original characters and situations than in Spiegelman's book. Spiegelman's tends to focus more, but not completely, on licensed characters.
Fortunately, there are no repeats in sight and both give credits where due. Sadly, Howard Post and Frank Frazetta who are both represented in the book, have since passed away, leaving Jules Feiffer as about the only sole surviving featured artist from the Golden Age in the book.
Another excellent feature is completing the story for Dr. Seuss' "Hejji" comic strip. I never knew it was incomplete. For those purists who don't want it tampered with, just don't read the ending.
And Yoe, that sneaky son of a gun, sneaks in one of the "Big Boy" stories that he helped publish. Of course, it helped that he got someone like Steve Ditko among others to help him out...
What else can I say about it? Just go and buy it and read it and discover that there has been more than superheroes out there in comic books...
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