Customer Reviews

The Complete Milt Gross Comic Books and Life Story

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Writer/editor Craig Yoe seems to specialize in uncovering little-known cartoonists such as Boody Rogers and the many obscure artists he explored in the four Arf volumes (Modern Arf, Arf Museum, Arf Forum and Comic Arf). This time, Yoe focuses on one of the most famous and successful cartoonists of the last century, who sadly has faded into relative obscurity. It's about time somebody did a book on Milt Gross, the only artist to have his name in the title of a comic book (save for Walt Disney who never actually drew comics).

The book is wonderful, and Gross deserves most of the credit for that, since it includes all of his comic book work in one hefty volume comprising an impressive 354 pages. The comic book pages are nicely reproduced (and not re-colored or doctored) from the original comics and are predictably hilarious. Milt's work is just terrific which it makes it all the more mysterious why he isn't more popular today. (Maybe this book will change that situation.)

But we can't ignore Yoe's contribution to the book, not only as editor and archivist but as author of a fairly in-depth biography that's chock full of rare illustrations and photographs. There's lots to read in this fascinating tale of success in the first half of the 20th century.

For me, the most enjoyable aspect of Milt's life story is how, back in the day, cartoonists were genuine stars, not unknown scribblers chained to a drawing board. From his work on the four-color funny pages Milt went on to work with Charlie Chaplin as a gag writer, among other accomplishments. Gross was a comic celebrity who dabbled in animation, books and even fine art.

I also have to say something about this book as a book. Unlike a novel, it is not "Kindle-friendly." The cover alone is a work of art, with a tipped-on color plate and fancy spot varnish on the spine. There are color endpapers that add to the deluxe feel. The tromp l'oeil effect on the cover makes it look like a tattered old comic book, but the quality binding assures that it will never actually be worn or tattered. The book even includes a Fold-In by Mad's Al Jaffee. Try THAT on a Kindle!

I highly recommend The Complete Milt Gross to anyone interested in comics history or anyone who just likes to laugh. It makes a great gift for the book-lover in your life.

Wow! There just aren't enough adjectives to describe the brilliant Milt Gross, one of the greatest American cartoonists of the 20th (or any other) Century. The last Gross reprint (HE DONE HER WRONG) came out in 2004. My review for that book contained the following: "A definitive, coffee table art book on Gross and his contributions to American comic strips and animated cartoons is long, long overdue..." Happily, that oversight has now been addressed with flying colors by groundbreaking editor/archivist Craig Yoe. An outstanding, milestone edition and a labor of love which I can sum up in two syllables: BUY IT!

To me Milt Gross is like an underground cartoonist decades before underground comix. So it was no surprise at all to learn from the book that R. Crumb is a fan. Gross' work has many of the same sensibilities of Crumb. The book even shows how Crumb quoted Gross on the cover of Zap Comix: "Is Dis a System?"--and I like how that's now on the cover of this book.

Speaking of the cover I love the tipped-in plate and how it looks like an old beat-up comic, yet the printing inside is so perfect. This sets the bar for how reprints of classic comics should be done. Easily five stars, I wish there were more to give.

I have been waiting to get my hands on this book and is was well worth the wait! I knew it would be great, as all of Craig Yoe's books are, but this exceeded all expectations! The book is incredibly thick, over 350 pages, full of those genius comics only Milt Gross can do! The reproduction is amazing, obviously a lot of love and care went onto the production of this must have book! Did I mention it's incredibly funny?

This is a massive book, and it is almost encyclopedic in it's content. The first 40 pages or so contain biographical information on Gross (often quite humorous) mixed in with various illustrations, photographs and personal letters, etc. It has the feel of having been taken from the family's scrapbook.

What follows next are close to 300 pages of nothing but colorful comic reproductions with no text other than in the comics themselves.

It is enough to keep you laughing for weeks! My only negative comment would be that I found the font in the biographical section to be very small and a little difficult to read.

They did a great job putting this book together. Very nicely done.

And a lot of fun!

When you first see the work of Milt Gross, there's something familiar about it. Even if you've never encountered the work itself, it's easy to see the influence in everything that came after it, from Mad magazine to Ren and Stimpy and everything even tangentially related to these things.

Gross uses a very loose style of drawing, creating hyperkinetic characters who are constantly channeling Picasso by changing shape between panels or sending off spirals and setting off explosions. Intricate, slapstick stream-of-consciousness plotlines exist in a place beyond reproach. There's no reason to criticize a pioneer of the artform.

The subject matter remains surprisingly relevant, even after 60 years: strange inventions, talking dogs, and generally comedic situations that any age group could grasp. As with most comics of the era, the speech patterns and some of the slang might take a bit of effort get used to, but the imagery largely speaks for itself. It probably won't appeal to the desensitized youth of today, but as an archive of what came before, it works perfectly.

The entire book is reprinted in "really old comic" style, with accidentally shifted printing plates and yellowed pages. If anything about the book bothers me, it's that the pages have been artificially, digitally "weathered." It's clear that Craig Yoe fetishizes old comics and cartoons based on his body of work, but when every page has the exact same imperfections, folds and spots around the border, you begin to question the authenticity of the printing. I would have preferred a more honest approach--either clean the pages up completely or present them exactly as you found them. What's the purest presentation of the material? It's a question that's open for debate, but I don't think that this is one of the options.

Aside from that, it's a beautifully printed book. Large pages, solid binding, and thick paper all contribute to a really excellent collection. The entire package is introduced by a brief word from Milt Gross's son and a nice biography written by Yoe and interspersed with ephemera from the career of Gross. This biography presents a character who seems to warrant an entire book dedicated to his strange, charming Hollywood-by-way-of-New -York life. For now, the world of Gross is excellently expressed through his work here.

The fine print of this volume indicates that there's even more material being compiled for an additional book, so the title Complete is a bit of a misnomer, because there's a lot more to see. But for now, it'll take a while to properly absorb these 350 pages of comic book pages.
-- Collin David

144 is a gross, but this one is 354-- pages, that is, full color, heavy stock, in a 9 X 11 mammoth hardback coffee table book. I first stumbled on Milt Gross' comic strip, "Nize Baby" in the Smithsonian Collection of Newspaper Comics Smithsonian Collection of Newspaper Comics, along with his other strips, "Count Screwloose", "Dave's Delicatessen", and his memorable header strip, "Banana Oil". I would pour over this book for hours gazing at the amazing thing that once was the comics, but especially the Milt Gross strips. The irresistible combination of anarchic doodling, zany slapstick, slang slogans, and frenetic pace made me want more of "Nize Baby".

There's almost no "Nize Baby" at all in this book. So what's in the 300 plus pages? As Craig Yoe makes clear in the subtitle, he's collected the comic books here, not the newspaper strips. Craig's book starts off with a MAD magazine style fold-in by Al Jafee, and ends on the back cover with blurbs by Matt Groening, R. Crumb, etc. cleverly stuck into balloons in a Milt comic page. In between are a foreword by Milt's son, Herb; and a 30 page intro/ life story by Craig.

Then it gets crazy fast, with the entire, 48 page, color issue of Milt Gross Funnies, number one comic book from American Comics Group, 1947. We learn that in order to get second class mailing permits, comics had to include a page of text, which may explain the origin of the short story pages, like "Lulu's Diry" in "Marge's Little Lulu". It's not just non-stop slapstick and one-liners. Despite the breakneck pace and zany style, "That's My Pop" spins a yarn about a kid who always beams "That's my pop!" and a dad who, despite the winds of fate and blows of fortune, always comes right in the end.

Also from 1947 comes Milt Gross Funnies number two, featuring "That's My Pop", "Pete the Pooch", and "Patsy Pancake" (a penguin). Next is the cover art of the unpublished Funnies number three. The rest of the book is made up of Milt stories from other ACG comics, "Giggle", "The Kilroys", "Hi-Jinx", and "Moon Mullins", mostly from 1948. Bringing up the rear are ten pages of "Milt Gross Reviews the News" from "Picture News", 1946, in which he skewers the events of the day in his inimitable style. To say this is a great book is a gross understatement.

There has been such a change in comic styles over the ages, and such an inundation of the superhero/Marvel type style of comic, that it is easy to forget how it all got started, and what gems there still exist in the older comics; the humor and drawing style of the Milt Gross comics makes for a fascinating and entertaining read.

This book has been showing up on my recommendations for months, and the reviews say "Marvelous!" and "Fantastic!", so I bought it.

Awful!

I never heard of Milt Gross before, but apparently he had a long, illustrious career. Unfortunately, we don't get any evidence of his comic genius, or even his comic competence. We don't get any samples of his work except for some horrible comic book stories published in the 1940s.

Sloppy, amateurish artwork, panels so busy that they give you a headache, cliched characters, boring plots. It's like a very bad Saturday morning cartoon from the 1960s, where the cat and mouse run past the same furniture over and over. Pure hack work, no evidence of thought, preparation, or talent.

And the book itself is too big and clunky to hold comfortably. It's like trying to read an world atlas.