Archivist Craig Yoe has a 'Weird Love' for comics

By now almost everyone knows that old comic books like Action Comics, Detective Comics and Amazing Spider-Man are worth thousands, sometimes millions of dollars.

But what about Beware!, Black Cat Mystery, The Strange World of Your Dreams or the always-savvy Career Girl Romances?

Those are the kinds of titles that bring a mad gleam to Craig Yoe's eye — the one not covered by a forbidding blond forelock — in his quest to bring some of the comic book industry's most obscure and outrageous stories of the fifties and sixties to new audiences.

For five years, Yoe Books, carried mainly by IDW Publishing, has been restoring an attic's worth of forgotten or overlooked comic art, from Archie and Popeye histories to Steve Ditko's Shorts and Jack Cole's Deadly Horror in fresh hardcover volumes.

In Yoe's reprint books Haunted Horror and the delirious Weird Love, stories such as "Your Head for Mine,'' or "I Fell for a Commie!'' simply must be read to be believed, steeped in revenge fantasies and parents-know-best values.

"Oh darling, you're so handsome when you wash your face,'' says the relieved heroine at the conclusion of "Love, Honor and Swing, Baby,'' a story of hippie redemption from Just Married #67 in 1969.

"There's a rich heritage of incredibly written and drawn comics — horror, humor, romance and more,'' says Yoe, 63, a cartoonist who has been creative director for The Muppets, Nickleodean and Disney. "And there's computer technology now to beautifully reproduce those vintage comics. People are eating these books up.''

Not surprisingly, the original art for bizarre stories such as "Candles for the Undead,'' or "Too Fat to Frug'' are long gone. So Yoe and his wife, Clizia Gussoni, who restores the art, often only have substandard copies of the comic books themselves as guides. Gussoni says that sometimes the print jobs on cheaper comics were so bad that red lips on a face showed up floating elsewhere in the panel.

Most of the comics are long abandoned in the public domain. But the Yoe Shop treats each story like a rare archaeological dig, aiming to restore the stories to how they looked on the newsstand rather than modernizing the color for new audiences.

"The warts and all of these cheaply printed newsprint comics are actually a big part of the appeal,'' says Yoe. "Our reprints are not 'sanitized for your protection.' We let the lurid, pulpy glory shine.''

The rigid morality tales of Weird Love, where the heroine always learns a harsh life lesson, are selling especially well, Yoe says. Wired magazine praises the comic as "deranged.''

In addition to the more lurid (and popular), titles, Yoe has taken the time to rescue the work of influential but little-known artists such as Milt Gross, Dick Briefer and Bob Powell, who worked in virtual anonymity for most of their careers. His work on publications and artists that time forgot has made him the Turner Classic Movies of comic book historians.

Yoe is not alone in the reprint business. DC, Marvel and EC Comics have long been reprinted in sometimes expensive hardcover volumes. And near-lost titles such as Phantom Lady, The Heap, Tarzan books from Gold Key, the early work of Joe Simon and Jack Kirby and others are being reissued regularly by a variety of publishers.

"It's crazy hoarder/collectors that we have to thank for saving the classics,'' Yoe says. "Now there is a Golden Age of reprints so everyone can feel, touch, smell and enjoy comics that were on the Endangered Species list. I've never had more fun''