![]() It must have meant something or a two-hour documentary film called "Crumb" wouldn't have opened here on Friday. What did it mean? Put more glide in your stride, more zip in your trip, hang in there but don't get hung up, dig the Kerouacian quirks of the mad sidewalks of America. Once he was a celebrity among students, communards, acid heads, runaways, guru-groupies and other members of that mind-tribe known as "the '60s." He was an outsider, a slouching nerd with a mustache that looked as though he were still trying to grow it, but he was also the comic-book laureate, the creator of the "Keep on Truckin' " panel showing stoned urban characters with huge shoes and little heads trucking down the street, leaning back and strewing their feet before them in a hipster cakewalk against a lurking city skyline that hints at Apocalypse. His fans thought he could have been doing much greater things, but, of course, they were never in his shoes and they never had his mortgage payments to make.You could talk to a lot of high school kids, even college kids or art school kids before you'd find anybody who'd heard of R. "After so many failures, he was grateful for a job that paid him well. Still, Kitchen says, Kurtzman was happy for the gig: ![]() Further limiting was the fact that each strip had to end with the title character taking off her clothes. But the artist was ultimately limited by his partnership with Hefner, who had his own ideas about the direction of the strip. Kitchen describes "Annie Fannie" as a "gorgeous strip" featuring individually painted panels that took a great deal of time to create. When Trump folded after only two issues, Kurtzman moved on to Humbug, a two-color magazine that also failed, leaving the illustrator and his partners penniless.Įventually, Kurtzman went on to create the "Annie Fannie" comic strip for Playboy. After a dispute with the publisher, he left Mad Magazine when the publication was at its most popular, instead going to work on Trump, a magazine published by Playboy's Hugh Hefner. Kurtzman may have had a knack for satire, but he was not a gifted businessman. So you can't really be a great satirist and be a political activist." "As Harvey often pointed out, real satire reveals a truth in society or in culture or in life in general. You need a certain absolute neutrality," explains Kitchen. "You can't be a good satirist and have an ax to grind. Though the magazine expressed a sense of liberal leftism that was uncommon in its day, Kitchen insists that Kurtzman was largely apolitical. ![]() When newsstands started pulling Mad from their racks, Kurtzman decided to turn the publication into a magazine.Īt its peak, Mad Magazine sold 2 million to 3 million copies per month. The comic books' political jabs created controversy on Capitol Hill, where politicians called for Senate hearings to investigate the connection between comics and juvenile delinquency. Now, in The Art of Harvey Kurtzman, Denis Kitchen explores the life and art of the famous satirist, weaving together the story of Kurtzman's career with a collection of the artist's images and illustrations.Īs Kitchen tells Robert Siegel, Kurtzman was, "in a sense, a one-man band" when he worked on the original Mad comic: He created it as a concept, drew most of the early covers himself and laid out every story so that artists had to follow his vision for every page. ![]() ![]() A comic mastermind who created Mad Magazine and Playboy's "Little Annie Fanny," Kurtzman also happened to discover Robert Crumb and gave Gloria Steinem her first job. Retrace the strands that led to a lot of current American satire - including The Simpsons, Saturday Night Live and The Daily Show - and sooner or later you end up at Harvey Kurtzman. ![]()
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