The Simon And Kirby Dream Works!

The Strange World of Your Dreams was a truly oddball comic book series from the Simon and Kirby duo. They were casting about in the days of the horror comic backlash for a different way tell a creepy story. With the eyes of the country's censors eager for comic books to foul up the industry was nervous. Books like this which had a staid style and were couched in a cloak of psychoanalysis offered a way in.

Actually for the true Simon and Kirby devotee there is relatively little of their work here. They contributed some evocative and memorable covers and each of the first three issues had a Simon and Kirby story but the key artist on the project was Simon and Kirby studio artist Mort Meskin. Meskin was a complicated fellow who seemed unusually suited for a comic book dealing with folks troubled by their dreams and his artwork was ideal for this kind of storytelling. Other members of the studio like Bill Draut offered up stories.

The stories vary a little, but mostly we have our narrator, a pipe-smoking expert named Dr. Richard Temple who would listen to some poor patient's dream and then offer up a rational explanation which usually put the patient's mind at rest, but sometimes not. Temple was a handsome fellow, aided by a lovely secretary who stood by as the resolute voice of absolute reason in and around the irrational images of the dreams.

Some of the stories read as more straightforward mystery tales, minus Temple's influence. Meskin usually did those. Later issues of the short run began to feature stories which focused oddly on Astrology as a key plot element. There were so many that you got the feeling you were reading a different comic. This was an interesting experiment with an oddly stately feel which allowed even the text stories (all featuring Temple) to be unusually readable.

There was to be a fifth issue of the series but it never materialized as the series wrapped after four installments.

There was another story which didn't feature Temple by name but was for all intents and purposes another Temple story which appeared in an early issue of Black Magic.

If you want to see these glorious stories at their best I recommend the Yoe Books collection which has some background information along with the tales themselves in an oddly handsome design.

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