Fredric Wertham was the psychiatrist who stigmatized comics in the 1950s. He died in 1981. Had he lived to see Craig Yoe’s new Woman & Man +, he would no doubt have spent the rest of his days psychoanalyzing the book and its creator.
Craig, as any discriminating pop culture fan knows, is an award-winning designer, toymaker, author, editor, publisher, and, in recent years, world traveler. First Craig moved his family to Berlin, then to the Canary Islands. Then he, himself, moved to the Philippines while his family sadly stayed behind.
Woman & Man + is, in its own unique way, a surreal visual commentary on all that has happened to him since he left the US. It’s also about, as one might suspect from the title, various aspects of the male/female dynamic in modern society…or maybe not. It’s hard to tell, actually. The book’s individual pages are a very personal, very trippy look into the unreconstructed hippie heart and mind of Yoe. Attempts at following any specific storyline as one goes through the pages (one doesn’t actually “read” them as there are very few actual words) netted me something different every time.
In the way of dreams, Snoopy, Nancy, Little Dot, Big Boy, Mickey Mouse, and many other familiar or almost familiar cartoon characters show up, usually in ways they would never be portrayed in their own worlds.
Every page of the tome is a new dream, with Bob Clampett-style sight gags mixing with sexual undertones (and sometimes overtones) and flowing seamlessly on to the next. One picks up on feelings much more than facts, and those feelings, both good and bad, can be overwhelming at times. This may be ultimately an art book but art, of course, is not required to be pretty. Here the pages are endlessly clever and creative, cutesy and silly, and yet often one can feel the darkness from them, especially as the book continues on.
Craig’s artwork is the type of thing that would give Basil Wolverton nightmares and probably give Salvador Dali erections. Naked body parts abound, although not always attached to bodies (and not always in the correct places when they are!). So, too, are various bodily fluids, tattoos, bugs, and crazy creatures on almost every page herein. Very little of the art is content to remain within panel borders. I’m surprised it all remains on the pages, all of which, by the way, are in black and white, except for a very few with purposeful use of colors.
Speaking of color, the book’s colorful and grotesquely hypnotic cover art serves perfectly as both an introduction and summation as to what lies ahead. The high-class packaging from Clover even comes with a red placeholder ribbon.
If one had to characterize Craig Yoe’s stream of consciousness art style, it reminds most of the early underground pioneers from Zap Comix such as his own mentor, Rick Griffin, as well as the great Victor Moscoso, S. Clay Wilson, and even R. Crumb himself, all mixed with more than a twinge of Dr. Seuss. A back cover quote refers to Yoe’s art as “Like Dr. Seuss on Acid” and I can get behind that statement.
In the end, you don’t really know all that much more about Craig personally than you knew going in, and yet somehow, on some level you can’t quite rationalize, you now ache for him, and yet deeply appreciate his artistic soul. Woman & Man + ends on an optimistic note, as the book itself has clearly acted as a catharsis to its creator.
I’ve been friends with Craig Yoe for 16 years now. He’s one of the most creative people I’ve ever known. With Woman & Man +, he’s channeled all of his long-suppressed feelings and emotions into his warped and endlessly mesmerizing art. It’s what artists do. It’s what geniuses do.
Booksteve recommends.
https://www.amazon.com/Woman-Man-Craig-Yoe/dp/1951757092
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