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MAGAZINES
#1
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.
MORE: http://scottbrothers.wordpress.com/2008/11/15/the-genius-of-harvey-kurtzman/
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Humbug was a humor magazine edited by Harvey Kurtzman with satirical jabs at movies, television, advertising and various artifacts of popular culture, from cereal boxes to fashion photographs. When it began August 1957 in a black-and-white comic-book size format, Kurtzman delivered his declaration of editorial principles in the first issue:
- We won't write for morons. We won't do anything just to get laughs. We won't be dirty. We won't be grotesque. We won't be in bad taste. We won't sell magazines.
Several of the contributing artists had previously worked with Kurtzman when he was the editor of Mad, including Wallace Wood, Jack Davis, Al Jaffee and Will Elder. The 32-page first issue featured a front cover by Elder (with the announcement "The End of the World Is Coming" inside a border design depicting contemporary life), followed with interior artwork by Elder, Kurtzman, Wood, Davis, Jaffee and Arnold Roth. Outside writer contributions included a piece by the novelist and screenwriter Ira Wallach. Elder illustrated Kurtzman's satire of television's rigged Twenty One quiz show, and Davis spoofed the Elia Kazan film of Tennessee Williams' Baby Doll (1956). The second issue expanded from 32 pages to 48 pages.
MORE: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humbug_(magazine)
#4
http://www.comicsreporter.com/index.php/briefings/blog_monthly/2006/01
The above picture was an ad for subscribing on the back cover of HUMBUG magazine, which was edited by Harvey Kurtzman and this picture was drawn by a fellow Georgia-corn fed boy Jack Davis.
MORE: http://ethunter1.blogspot.com/2007_10_01_archive.html
Elder Statesman of Comics
One could do worse than having a comic strip about a bubble-headed blonde that ran in the back pages of Playboy as one’s most well known accomplishment. But if your name was Will Elder, who died May 14 at age 86, you could do a whole lot better. And indeed, although his earlier works are lesser known, they have a much more respectable, and respectful, following.
More than the general public, designers are likely to be familiar with Elder’s brilliant disassembling of the mass media and pop culture in general, starting with Mad in its nascent phase as a 10-cent comic book. Countless comics artists—from Robert Crumb, Kim Deitch and Rick Griffin to Art Spiegelman, Dan Clowes and Chris Ware—have been profoundly affected by his comics, to say nothing of his numerous art department heirs at Mad, the magazine, over the past 50 years.
MORE: http://www.aiga.org/content.cfm/elder-statesman-of-comics
MORE: http://boingboing.net/2008/08/12/nostalgic-look-at-ol.html
MORE: http://pappysgoldenage.blogspot.com/2007_09_01_archive.html
And now, let's talk about the glorious Fantagraphics reprint of the entire run of Harvey Kurtzman’s satiric masterpiece, the little magazine entitled Humbug, that was published from August 1957 until its sad demise 11 issues later in October 1958. The glory of the project is first evident in the package: a slip-cased two-volume set, each glistening shiny-cover volume approximately 230 7x10-inch pages, most with a second color throughout (reproducing exactly, in other words, the pages of the original publication).
MORE: http://gocomics.typepad.com/rcharvey/2009/05/index.html
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