The Strange World of Your Dreams: Comics Meet Dali & Freud! Hardcover – July 30, 2013

Leave it to Craig Yoe and Yoe! Books. I was very happy to see someone finally had the sense to collect all four issues from Simon & Kirby's unique 50s comic "The Strange World of Your Dreams" into one book. This is very hard to find stuff, and if you do find it it ain't cheap!I love the overall design of the book, too. They cleverly used a textured and padded cover printed with a striped pattern to simulate a pillow. Classic! The introduction has a nicely written article about the early psychological examination of dreams and dream meanings and how this had an impact on artists in the early 20th century. It then goes on to talk about some of the ways dreams and dream-like fantasy were incorporated into comics, primarily focusing on Windsor McKay's work on "Dreams of a Rarebit Fiend" and, naturally, "Little Nemo in Slumberland." In addition to this interesting introduction, they've included some nice choices for extra content, such as a complete story concerning dreams from another SImon & Kirby book from the same era, "Black Magic", along with 2 unpublished SWOYD covers.I have only a few minor criticisms, mostly concerning the production techniques. For instance, the repro of the comic on the pillow-like book cover appears muddy and out-of-focus due to the textured material used. One of the gorgeous unpublished covers is only shown at half size and then colored with a blue tint that obscures the great Kirby artwork. Finally, the comic stories are reproduced with the same sort of print quality with which they originally appeared. That includes all the coarse dots, garish colors and off-register imaging, which leads me to believe the pages were scanned directly from original printed pages. If that was the case, there probably wasn't much they could do to control that. Anyway, in the absence of access to original art, it seems like the only other alternative to scanning originals is to Theakstonize the pages, in effect bleaching out the color, and that often results in the destruction of some of the fine inking detail.I really consider these minor criticisms, and overall this is a great book, and possibly the only chance you'll have to read these comics in their entirety. Not only that, but it's being offered at an extremely affordable price for excellent quality. Thank you, Craig Yoe and company, for your dedicated efforts to bring yet another classic gem of the Golden Age to comic book lovers.

That this set of comic books ever existed is a strange and cool thing. Joe Simon and Jack Kirby were true comic book pioneers, and this is one of their experiments, not so commercially successful, but definitely fun to read.The Strange World of Your Dreams appeared beginning in 1952 and was meant to appeal to adult readers. Adult readers presumably, were interested in self reflection and the examined life. The idea is that readers send accounts of their dreams to the fictitious dream analyst, Richard Temple. The publishers would choose dreams to include in the comic (and pay the readers $25 for submitting them, if chosen). With the artwork of Jack Kirby, the dreams would be set to comic format and analyzed by the Temple character.It's all pretty entertaining. The dreams are anxiety-ridden. There are no dreams of magic castles, unicorns, and happily ever afters. It's monsters from the id right and left. Some reveal suppressed fears or memories, others are portents of the future. Great stuff.The artwork is also great stuff -- the covers are beautiful works of imagination. And the whole thing is put in a book made to look like an old fashioned pillow. It's even padded for comfort.I wish there had been more than 4 released issues of the comic, but, as the introduction says, sales were "disappointing."The introduction contains some interesting history of the treatment of dreams in comic format before Simon and Kirby, including "Dreams of the Rarebit Fiend" from 1905 and "Little Nemo in Slumberland" in the New York Herald from 1909. It's all a testament to our fascination with our dreams, and our wonder about what to make of them.

Strange World of your Dreams reprints some of the later efforts of the Simon and Kirby team. The stories are decent fantasy story fare - not strong enough to be considered horror, and of course, they are all dreams, so the fantastic elements are undercut by the explicit explanation offered by the dream analyst. The art is nice, as you'd expect from the Simon and Kirby shop, with the Kirby work and the Meskin work being the strongest.The book itself is what I call over-designed -- for instance, it has a padded cover meant to evoke a mattress, complete with a tag. I personally find that these sorts of touches detract rather than add to the reading experience for me. At their best, they are a distraction, at their worst, they are annoying. I found the padded cover annoying.The pages are reproduced adequately, but without the care taken by the folks working on the Simon and Kirby Library volumes published by Titan.I do not know if the Simon, Kirby, Meskin et al. estates receive any proceeds from this repackaging of their work.Overall, until the Simon and Kirby Library series reprints this material, this is probably the best place to read it.

Very nice and handsome collection of some of Simon and Kirby's most bizarre work, very amusingly packaged with a puffy cover that resembles a pillowcase. One must, as often is the case with Yoe books, put up with a sense that Craig Yoe is as interested in bragging about the breadth of his own personal collection as he is about getting this copyright free material out there.Overpriced, but more tolerable given the healthy Amazon discount.

Well executed by the publisher! Interesting angle of what preceeded the golden age of comic books. It actually has the feel of what an average person would do as an editor of something not widely used...the first of productions of which Rod serling got motivated off this comic magazine. I would like it if they finished the last issue and then put out reprints for that! That would be good closure to the book itself!

Uno de los trabajos mas interesantes del Jack "El Rey" Kirby, mas alla de los personajes enmallados, saliendo de los estereotipos de la época. Una etapa experimental, pero realmente muy desafiante para el titan de los cómics antes mencionado.

Spätestens ab den 40er Jahren war Freuds Terminologie mit den wesentlichen Begriffen in den allgemeinen Sprachschatz gelangt und hatte in den Bereich der Unterhaltungsmedien Einzug gehalten. Das Unbewußte, das Ich, Träume, Komplexe, Angst- und Persönlichkeitsstörungen waren household names, wurden diskutiert und peppten Krimis und andere Genres auf. Ähnlich verhielt es sich mit dem Surrealismus und seinen Exponenten, allen voran vielleicht Dali. 1945 kombinierte Hitchcock in SPELLBOUND Elemente der Psychoanalyse mit dem Surrealismus, indem er von Dali die Kulisse für eine Traumszene gestalten ließ. Sieben Jahre später, 1952, begann eine Comicserie, die es leider nur auf vier Ausgaben gebracht hat: THE STRANGE WORLD OF YOUR DREAMS mit dem damals nicht unüblichen und verkaufsfördernden Zusatz TRUE. Die Hefte werden hier als großformatiges Reprint gesammelt mit kleinem aber feinem Bonusmaterial neu vorgelegt. Gebunden und fadengeheftet dürfte ihnen jetzt ein längeres Leben beschert sein als zur Zeit der Erstveröffentlichung.Der Untertitel COMICS MEET DALI & FREUD sollte gleichwohl die Erwartungen nicht allzu hoch schrauben. Obwohl die Artwork von Simon und Kirby stammt, unterstützt von Mort Meskin und Bill Draut, ragen viele der Panels nicht über die Massenware Comic heraus. Den Bezug zu Dali herzustellen, dürfte die Herausgeber einige Überwindung gekostet haben, wenn man nicht vollkommene Gewissenlosigkeit unterstellen möchte. Und auch Freud würde sich als Pate der Hefte wohl im Grabe umdrehen, seine Traumdeutung wird nur als schauerromantisches Mittel eingesetzt.Und doch, und doch... ja, die Hefte haben etwas. Wer sich für die Geschichte des Comic interessiert oder auch ganz allgemein für die popkulturelle Zeitgeschichte wird THE STRANGE WORLD OF YOUR DREAMS genießen. So herrlich naiv, so verliebt in leicht zu erzeugende Gänsehaut wird es nie wieder!

Great!!