Indie Edge November 2014: Craig Yoe
Oct 24, 2014
This month’s featured creator is…
CRAIG YOE
Craig Yoe, please tell us about yourself!
With my partner Clizia Gussoni, I produce coffee table books for Yoe Books, an indie imprint of IDW. At Yoe Books we are now excitedly celebrating our 5th anniversary! It was five years ago that we put together a large-format deluxe book, The Art of Ditko (JAN130460), with its rare art, essays, and a fascinating introduction by Stan Lee. There have been many fun books since then! I've received some nice accolades from the media. David Colton, the executive editor of USA Today, called me,“The comic book genre's master archeologist!" ABC-TV said I was “America’s foremost comics historian!” Vice Magazine touted me as the “Indiana Jones of comic history.” I BLUSH!
I published a fanzine, "Yoessarian," on comics history nearly 50 years ago, so I've been passionate about comics for a long while. I did get distracted from comics when I was a minister, a nightclub owner, a toy designer, a Creative Director and Vice President General Manager for Jim Henson and his Muppets, a Creative Director for Disney and a Creative Director for Nickelodeon. But now I'm finally back into funny books!
What are your favorite projects you’ve contributed to in past?
My fave books we've done are the five Ditko books (NOV120414) — I'm such a big fan! Then, there's the books in the Chilling Archives of Horror Comics like Bob Powell's Terror (AUG110387), Howard Nostrand's Nightmares (SEP140520), and Dick Briefer's Frankenstein (JUN100384).
We are now thrilled to be publishing books by other comic historians and designers, and look forward to more such partnerships. Mike Howlett wrote and collected all the comics for, and Jason Willis designed, The Worst of Eerie Publications (JUL140431). Mike Ambrose and Donnie Pitchford put together Tom Sutton's Creepy Things (OCT140569). These books are incredible!
I love our hilarious humor book Milt Gross: The Complete Comic Books and Life Story." We're stoked that we have unearthed the cartoonist's lost graphic novel, Milt Gross' New York (OCT140558), and that our reprint of this uber-rarity just came out with an intro by Jim Steranko!
Comics About Cartoonists: Stories About the World's Oddest Profession was the greatest book we've ever done or will ever do! But our proudest project was creating the superhero comic book "The School of 5." It teaches kids in impoverished countries to wash their hands to prevent upper respiratory and diarrheal diseases that take millions of young lives every year. The comic book is now published in 19 languages in 23 countries, and has the highest circulation of any comic in history — 20 million! This comic book is saving countless lives! It's the feel-good project of a lifetime!
What are you currently working on?
At the time of this interview we're finishing up the hardback Weird Love: You Know You Want It! (OCT140568). This bat-poop-crazy book should be hitting all finer comic shops at just about the same time that this interview appears. We had so much fun doing this project! It's a compilation of the first three issues (with cool bonuses!) of our pamphlet-style comic book Weird Love (MAY140541), and features depraved, bizarro, so-bad-they're-good stories and so-good-it's-Good-Girl-Art from the wildest romance comics of the 1950s and '60s.
We're about to wrap-up Reefer Madness Comics, a book stuffed with nutzoid anti-marijuana comics of the 1940s and ’50s. What were these cartoonists smoking?! Reefer Madness Comics will debut on 4:20 (the twentieth day of April) in a few months.
Speaking of Spinach… ARF! ARF!… we're always joyfully working away on our "Bud" Sagendorf Popeye collections (FEB108268)! Plus, we're honored to be working on a number of more life-saving comics! Superheroes battle tooth decay and germs from dirty toilets!
What fun titles are you reading?
I drop everything when the new issue of Roy Thomas’ Alter-Ego magazine from TwoMorrows hits my mailbox, along with the great tomes he’s doing for PS Art Books. Roy has beat me to some reprint projects I wanted to do, but then all’s fair in love and comics!
The Library of American Comics has produced a Polly and Her Pals book of Sunday comics that I treasure because Cliff Sterrett was a far out genius!
Mike Howlett wrote a brilliant history book for Feral House, The Weird World of Eerie Publications: Comic Gore That Warped Millions of Young Minds, that inspired me to get him to do the book for us, The Worst of Eerie Publications. This "worst" book compiles the BEST of the actual comics that must be causing Dr. Fredric Wertham to spin in his grave, yo!
