It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad Monster Party

 

My version of Francesca from Mad Monster Party (1967) in her green dress, done in brush pen.

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Wood, Jerry, Wood

Although my admiration for Mad Magazine and its artists is well-documented on this site, I realized I had yet to do any post highlighting seminal comic artist, Wally Wood. Possibly the most prolific of the original Mad artists, Wally Wood not only worked with Harvey Kurtzman on Mad and the other Kurtzman satire magazines that would follow, he was a featured artist in dozens of series, as well as a prized journeyman for “Adult Comics”. Wood also self-published a great deal, particurally with one of the first underground comics, Witzend, and then later collecting his own Sally Forth and Cannon strips.

You can find more about Wally Wood and his amazing career over at the blog, Horray For Wally Wood which recently posted original comic pages from the EC short, “My World”. Below is the first page, for the rest of the comic, go to the previously mentioned blog.

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Mad Men of Comics

Harvey Kurtzman knew funny. As a cartoonist he keenly deployed slapstick, parody and satire in ways that were not only hilarious, but groundbreaking as well. In addition, he was a gifted ringleader, someone who could harness the best talent from the grindhouse that was the comics industry at the time. With fellow artists, Will Elder, Jack Davis, Al Jaffe, Wally Wood and Arnold Roth. Kurtzman created some of the most innovative humor magazines of the last century: Mad, Humbug, Trump and Help! These artists were his bullpen, the cartoonists he went to again and again for various assignments over many years. Although, all of the latter magazines failed (except, of course, Mad) they were bold experiments indeed, their influence still felt today. Would there be a National Lampoon without Help!? Probably not.

Kurtzman also help “discover” countless other talented individuals, many of whom worked with him on his numerous publications over the years; Robert Crumb, Terry Gilliam and Gloria Steinem to name a few. Before they made a name for themselves they all worked under the tutelage of Kurtzman’s expert editorship. And there were still others, comedians and the like, who starred in his series of Fumentti stories for Help!; Woody Allen, John Cleese, Jackie Gleason and Henny Youngman.

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Jack Davis in the First Issue of Mad Magazine

It’s genuinely a hard task to pick my favorite cartoonist out of the original Mad Magazine crew. I admire Harvey Kurtzman, Bill Elder, Wally Wood and Jack Davis all greatly, and for different reasons. They were amazing draftsmen and funny as all get out. But I think Jack Davis would win out in the inking category. His inks are amazing to look at; the variety of line weight, the tangible texture of clothes and faces that he is able to create from the stroke of a pen, is not only instructive but really pleasing to the eye (much of this attention to detail is on display on the splash page of “Hoohaw”).

But the thing I notice most about a Jack Davis drawing: the shoes and hands. The men’s shoes have such great detail and specificity. And the hands, well, they may be, hands down (oi!), the best in the business; you can see every joint, how they all work together to form an actual, functional mechanism. Indeed, a Jack Davis comic panel is a treat to behold.

Long live Jack Davis, the King of Hands!

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Harvey Kurtzman’s Mad, Mad, Mad World

The Art of Harvey Kurtzman: The Mad Genius of Comics (Denis Kitchen and Paul Buhle, Abrams ComicArts, $40) 

In his introduction to this groundbreaking book, comedian/writer Harry Shearer declares: “Without Harvey Kurtzman, there would have been no Saturday Night Live. What a horrible thing to say about him, but it’s true. . . . OK, this might be better. Without Harvey Kurtzman, there would have been no Simpsons.”

All hyperbole aside, there is much truth in this statement, and, like many other influential artists, Harvey Kurtzman seldom receives the credit he is due for shaping much of what we know as satire in postwar America. As the creator of MAD magazine, Kurtzman had many roles: artist, editor, writer, and ringleader. He nurtured the burgeoning underground comics movement, and his paperback comic novel, The Jungle Book, may have well been the first graphic novel, appearing years before Will Eisner’s Contract with God, which is usually considered the original graphic novel. He gave Gloria Steinem her first job in publishing. He brought John Cleese and Terry Gilliam together and was responsible for publishing some of Robert Crumb’s earliest work. And without Kurtzman’s other, more adult magazines, Humbug, Trump and Help, there very well might not have been a National Lampoon or Spy.

The Art of Harvey Kurtzman is the first large-scale retrospective of Harvey Kurtzman’s work, written by Denis Kitchen, a legend in underground comics in his own right, and scholar Paul Buhle. It traverses his stunning career, outlining how much of an impact his life and work had not only in the comics industry, but on pop culture itself. The book itself is a striking example high production aesthetic, an amazing compendium of Kurtzman’s personal drawings, comic strips, layouts and comic “essays” he did for magazines like Esquire.

Chapters cover the major parts of his life, pre and post MAD, giving just as much credence and attention to those periods as the MAD years. And what the book does remarkably well is show what an amazing cartoonist he was in his own right, standing toe to toe with the other amazing roster of artists that surrounded him. Will Elder, Jack Davis and Wally Wood were amazing draftsman’s to be sure, but it was Kurtzman’s ability to capture a mood, or a sense of movement, of weight in just a few strokes of the pen or pencil that is evident in every drawing presented in the book. Animator John K has often sited Kurtzman’s drawing skills on his blog, dissecting not only Kurtzman’s use of the Line of Action but his canny ability to layout a page, giving story and art equal time in terms of overall impact.

The book pays a great deal of attention to Harvey Kurtzman’s process, which could be fairly intricate (often times Kurtzman would write and layout pages, much to the chagrin of some artists who were working for him). Many of his initial thumbnails and final layouts of pages are presented, along with the finished product.  

There is a long chapter covering much of Kurtzman’s earliest work for EC, Two-Fisted Tales and Frontline Combat. The book reprints in full (one of several complete reprintings) the classic story “Corpse on the Imjin!” which not only displays Kurtzman’s uniquely human storytelling, but his amazing artistic skills. Much more stylized than any other artists on the EC war comics roster, his illustrations were boldly inked, and superbly designed, the impact much greater then a hyper-realistic interpretation.

The Art of Harvey Kurtzman reprints many comics from various projects, often times in their entirety. There is the famous “Superduperman” from MAD, illustrated by Wally Wood, a never before seen proof of a 3-D  spoof comic, and probably, most striking of all, a section that reprints a page from a little Annie Fannie story, complete with preproductions all of the vellum overlays (using actual vellum) that Kurtzman produced for his partner—the amazing Will Elder—to work from. These reprints are often the highlights of the book, as they are sometimes the original proofs, accompanied by the original layouts and contextualized with detailed background on how each was designed and developed.

The Trump, Humbug and Help, years are also covered in depth, with many of the covers reprinted as well as often time hilarious promotional photos of the people involved in their creation.

Long on amazing art, The Art of Harvey Kurtzman is sometimes lacking in it’s overview of the man himself. A few years back Fantagrpahics released a fanatastic book as part of their library series, Harvey Kurtzman: TCJ Library Vol. 7  in which every major interview that appeared in the Comics Journal—along with other famous interviews in other magazines—were reprinted in their entirety. The interviews often time give a bit more depth and background than The Art of Harvey Kurtzman provides. And like The Art of, Harvey Kurtzman: TCJ Library Vol. 7 , includes a wealth of stunning visual material, some of which is not covered in The Art of.

In many ways The Art of Harvey Kurtzman: The Mad Genius of Comics  is almost years too late. The fact that it took this long for an edition like this to emerge,  is just another example of an artist only receiving credit for their groundbreaking achievements after they are dead. On the other hand, it is wonderful that there is finally a book like this that catalogues all of Harvey Kurtzman’s amazing achievements, hopefully inspiring a new generation of cartoonists who many have never even heard his name before.

  

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Harvey Kurtzman’s “Help” Covers

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The Genius of Harvey Kurtzman

  

Harvey Kurtzman was not only the founder and editor of Mad magazine (as well as Help!, Humbug and Trump), a master of American satire, but he was also an amazing cartoonist in his own right. He had great instinct for composition and layout (he always did the layouts for his artists). A newly launched site, The Little World of Harvey Kurtzman, is devoted to some amazing covers as well interior pages from a bevy of magazines he helped produce. Some of the pages he art directed on, some he wrote and illustrated. Along with quotes from Kurtzman himself as well as critics and other artiist, this site is a great resource for any Kurtzman fan. Check it out here:

And don’t miss out on the blog, Those Fabouloius Fiftes which has been publishing pages from Help! as well as a bulk of work that Kurtzman did for magazines like Madison Avenue Magazine.

And if that wasn’t enough, this winter, Fantagraphics will finally be publishing all 11 issues of Humbug in a two volume slipcase hardcover set. This is not to be missed by fans of Kurtzman, Will Elder, Jack Davis and Al Jaffe. Fantagraphics is going to great lengths to reproduce the art from those issues. Check out those lengths here. Hey, I said lengths again.

Meanwhile, here are a few pages from Harvey Kurtzman’s outstanding magazine work, including the likes of Esquire and Madison Avenue Magazine.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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