>> edited and designed by Greg Sadowski  >> introduction by Jonathan Lethem  >> Ladies and gentlemen!  Step right up and see the wonders of the ages!  This is where it all began:  the protoplasmic early days of the superhero comic book -- wild & heady, zany & crazy, fantastic & non-sensical, rough around the edges; all this and more.  Reading these stories is like witnessing history in the making, it is being present at the birth.  Sure, we've all read those original Superman and Batman stories along with other DC classics, as well as a those old Captain America, Submariner, Human Torch tales, and maybe a few other Golden Age Marvels (well, Timelys, actually), but these are usually presented in a self-promoting fashion by their corporate owners which mitigates and obscures the historical context in which these works need to be read to fully appreciate their novelty.  The work here spans the years 1936 to 1941, with the bulk of it originating in 1939 and 1940.  It is divided by publisher and includes the Comics Magazine Company, Chesler, Centaur, Fox, MLJ, Fiction House, Columbia, Your Guide/Rhoda and Novelty Press,  Some of the earliest work by the brightest stars of the Golden Age are collected here:  Jack Kirby, Will Eisner, Lou Fine, Jack Cole, Basil Wolverton, Bill Everett, Ogden Whitney, Dick Briefer, Fred Guardineer, and, yes, Fletcher Hanks.  It appears that this volume has been put together employing high quality scans of the original comic books which were then digitally restored and and enhanced and then crisply printed on flat (non-glossy) bright paper stock, and the results are excellent,  A minor quibble is that, for our money, we would have preferred an off-white paper that more closely matches the newsprint upon which these comics were originally printed, but this is negligible when stacked next to all that is right with the production.  While it should go without saying that no self-respecting comics scholar can pass this up, we hasten to add that anyone who misses the plain old fun that we associate with the term comic book, who wants a jolt of that good ol' four-color energy from back in the day, need look no further than this fine volume.

>> edited by Craig Yoe <<  
Weird Love is a new collector series from the House of Yoe.  Featuring 48 pages of old school romance comics from back in the day – in this case from betwen 1953 and 1968 – this issue is well worth the price of admission.  The cover story, "The Love of a Lunatic" is an ACG classic – originally published in Romantic Adventures #50 in 1954 – drawn by the one and only Ogden Whitney.  This issue opens with another early romance comic classic, "I Fell for a Commie," from Love Secrets #32, published in 1953.  As usual with Yoe productions, the selection of material is great, the production is good, and the presentation is schmaltzy to the point of misrepresentation.  The stories collected here – a least the pre-code ones – are actually relatively straightforward tales that address common concerns of the day, albeit in the highly melodramatic fashion required by squeezing complex stories into 6 to 12 pages of comics (quite an accomplishment, when you stop to think about it), that are created month after month.  It is, in our opinion, a disservice to the material to emblazon "OMG" "Kinky" "Sick" and "Bizarro" across the cover (and, "Yoe-mance"? was that really necessary?) of a comic book containing solid, engaging works of comics melodrama – again, at least in the case of the pre-code stories.  That the stories presented in Weird Love #1 which originate in the late 1960s are indeed relatively trite and occasionally ludicrous it is hard to argue, but even these do not warrant the labels being applied here.  So, read these great stories, but "Don't Believe the Hype."
 

Long treasured here at The Copacetic Comics Company, the truly unique – and rarely seen – late-period romance comics of the one and only Ogden Whitney have at last been collected in book form.  This volume has been many years in the making, and we are excited to see it at last gracing our new arrivals table.  What is it about these comics that makes them so unforgettable? There is a pathos at work here as in few other comics.  Whitney was a life long cartoonist and comics maker.  He had dedicated his life to his craft, and here in these comics he is heading into the home stretch. This work carries with it the private sufferings and triumphs of a life lived in and for comics.  There is a self-abnegation that stands side-by-side with a simultaneous search for redemption. This combination yields some unexpected results.  While there is a clear sense of the absurd present in each of these stories – to which readers will find conjoined the nagging question of how intentional its presence was – there is equally present a sense of wonder.  Who are these people? What makes them tick? What is this thing called love?  These comics by Ogden Whitney may just have the answers. 

Liana Finck provides a contemporary perspective on what constitutes Whitney's appeal that will help put readers on the path to his door, and then co-editor Dan Nadel provides an afterword which includes a brief but insightful historical overview of Whitney's comics career and personal life – which remains obscure – along with an account of the genesis of this collection and some analysis of the work it contains, that, in addition to being informative, will aid any readers looking to unlock some of the further, inner doors that lay within these stories, which can fairly be described as somewhat esoteric texts.  The exact nature of their appeal continues to be elusive, possessing a near perfect embodiment of the French expression, je ne sais quoi...