Harvey Kurtzman
Food or Comics? | Everybody wants a piece of the Action
Welcome to Food or Comics?, where every week we talk about what comics we’d buy at our local comic shop based on certain spending limits — $15 and $30 — as well as what we’d get if we had extra money or a gift card to spend on a “Splurge” item.
Check out Diamond’s release list or ComicList, and tell us what you’re getting in our comments field.
Graeme McMillan
It’s a slow week, this week; if I had $15, I’d use it to catch up on some recent enjoyments like Action Comics #3 (DC, $3.99) and OMAC #3 (DC, $2.99), two of my favorite titles from the New 52 relaunch–OMAC in particular has been a really weird and wonderful joy–as well as the final issue of Marvel’s great and sadly underrated Mystic revival (#4, $2.99). I’d also see if the parody-tastic Shame Itself #1 (Marvel, $3.99) lives up to its potential, because “Wyatt Cenac + Colleen Coover” sounds pretty promising to these ears.
- November 1, 2011 @ 04:00 PM by JK Parkin
Comics A.M. | Flashpoint gets real? 31,000 flock to Otakon
from Flashpoint #4
Publishing | Popular comic-book guest star President Barack Obama will make a brief appearance in this week’s Flashpoint #4. DC Comics Executive Editor Eddie Berganza told USA Today that the inclusion of the actual President, rather than a fictional counterpart, signals that the danger is real — something that will get pushed as the publisher prepares for the September relaunch. [USA Today]
Publishing | Fantagraphics announced the lineup for the first volume of its EC archives series, which will collect Harvey Kurtzman’s war stories. [Fantagraphics blog]
Conventions | More than 31,000 anime and manga enthusiasts flocked to Baltimore over the weekend for Otakon, one of the biggest fan-oriented anime conventions. There were a few anime and manga licenses announced, but mainly it was a meet-and-greet for fans and publishers. [Anime News Network]
- August 2, 2011 @ 07:07 AM by Brigid Alverson and JK Parkin
SDCC ’11 | Fantagraphics to publish EC Comics Library
from Corpse on the Imjin by Harvey Kurtzman
On the same day that Fantagraphics announced The Complete Zap Comix, the publisher revealed it will bring yet another treasure trove of groundbreaking comics back to the stands. At its panel at Comic-Con International and in an interview with The Comics Reporter’s Tom Spurgeon, Fantagraphics announced it had acquired the rights to publish the EC Comics library from the representatives of its late publisher, William M. Gaines.
Known for pushing comics’ boundaries of formal innovation and craft as well as raw content before anti-comics hysteria and the creation of the Comics Code helped stifle the publisher in the mid-’50s, EC has generally been reprinted in formats that center on its (in)famous horror, crime, science fiction, and war anthology series, such as Tales from the Crypt, The Vault of Horror, The Haunt of Fear, Crime SuspenStories, Weird Science, Weird Fantasy, Two-Fisted Tales, and Frontline Combat. What sets the Fantagraphics reprint project apart is that individual creators’ work will be culled from the series in which it appeared and presented in a series of black-and-white solo spotlight volumes. The first four books announced will collect war stories written by Harvey Kurtzman (Corpse on the Imjin and Other Stories, featuring art by Kurtzman, Gene Colan, Russ Heath, and Joe Kubert), suspense stories by Wally Wood (Came the Dawn and Other Stories), horror stories by written by Al Feldstein and illustrated by Jack Davis, and science fiction stories by Al Williamson.
Click on over to The Comics Reporter for more details, including an interview with editor and co-publisher Gary Groth.
- July 24, 2011 @ 01:10 PM by Sean T. Collins
Comics College | Harvey Kurtzman
Mad Archives Vol. 2
Comics College is a monthly feature where we provide an introductory guide to some of the comics medium’s most important auteurs and offer our best educated suggestions on how to become familiar with their body of work.
Today it’s time (long pat time actually) to take a look at one of the most influential and undisputed masters of the comics medium, Harvey Kurtzman.
- May 28, 2010 @ 01:00 PM by Chris Mautner
Straight for the art | Harvey Kurtzman’s Sesame Street cartoons
Drawing for Kurtzman's 'Boat' cartoon
I had no idea Mad founder Harvey Kurtzman ever did any work for Sesame Street, but lo and behold animator Michael Sporn has the images to prove it. (via Cartoon Brew, which also has a YouTube video of the finished cartoon)
- March 15, 2010 @ 02:00 PM by Chris Mautner
Talking Comics with Tim: Nick Bertozzi
Iraq War Stories
A few weeks back when I heard about Iraq War Stories, Nick Bertozzi’s project with his School of Visual Arts Comic Book Storytelling Workshop students, I wanted to immediately interview him. Here’s the advance write-up that caught my attention: “I’ve been teaching cartooning at The School of Visual Arts for a while now and this past year I asked the students in my Comic Book Storytelling Workshop to adapt stories that take place in Iraq during the War. Most of the students found stories from bloggers on the web, a few adapted stories told to them by friends, and one student, himself a veteran of the Iraq War, wrote and drew a story based on his own experience.
My good friend Dean Haspiel was wise enough to suggest that we put the stories up on the internet for all to see at the internet comics site that I’m part of, ACT-I-VATE.com.
The purpose of this anthology is not to wave a flag for or against the war—though some of the stories certainly have a political bent—instead, I asked the students to give me stories that would give the reader a sense of how the War has affected individuals, both American and Iraqi.”
The anthology series will release its second installment this Sunday.
Tim O’Shea: The anthology series will feature 13 stories ultimately–selected from the Comic Book Storytelling Workshop, how many students in total submitted stories?
Nick Bertozzi: I’m waiting to hear back from two more students who are making very slight tweaks to their comics, so there may be 15 comics when we’re all done.
- May 15, 2009 @ 03:00 PM by Tim O'Shea
Robot reviews: Humbug
Humbug
Humbug
by Harvey Kurtzman, Jack Davis, Will Elder, Al Jaffee and Arnold Roth
Fantagraphics Books, 476 pages, $60.
It’s very easy with a book of this nature to engage in wild hyperbole. “The most important publishing project of the year! No, the decade!” one wants to type. “There won’t be a better collection out this year!” “If I had to choose between breathing and reading this book, I’d choose the latter!!” “You’re a fool if you don’t buy this book, you hear me? A fool!”
And yet, how else to talk about a project of this nature, a large collection of work featuring some of the most stellar cartoonists of their day, originally edited by one of the most important and influential humorists (and I really don’t think this is hyperbole here — I’d put him up there with Richard Pryor in terms of significance) of the 20th century? Regardless of the bad economy, it’s got to say something incredibly positive about the current state of the industry that Fantagraphics sees publishing a book this massive and to a certain extent obscure as a viable financial venture.
- March 17, 2009 @ 10:00 AM by Chris Mautner
Collect this now! The complete Help magazine
Help! No. 24
With the release of the new Humbug two-volume set, the upcoming biography by Denis Kitchen and Dark Horse’s Trump collection, 2009 is surely the year of Harvey Kurtzman.
I’m going to be reviewing Humbug tomorrow, but for today’s purposes, I wanted to talk about one of the few remaining holes in Kurtzman’s ouevre, namely Help! magazine.
Spanning 1960-65 — the time period between the close of Humbug and the creation of Little Annie Fanny for Playboy, Help! is not as well-regarded as the former or as slick and risque as the latter, but it’s notable for more than being Kurtzman’s longest running stint on a magazine after his departure from EC and Mad.
- March 16, 2009 @ 11:15 AM by Chris Mautner