Harvey Kurtzman

Harvey Kurtzman (born October 3, 1924 in New York City , † February 21, 1993 in Mount Vernon , New York ) was an American cartoonist and comic artist . In 1952 he founded Mad magazine .

Kurtzman also drew (together with Will Elder ) from 1962 to 1988 the Little Annie Fanny strips for American Playboy , which parodied the image and presentation of women in the magazine. Because Mad was a major influence on popular culture, Kurtzman was named "one of the most important people in America after the war" by the New York Times .

The early years

As a child, Kurtzman drew the comic strip "Ikey and Mikey" in chalk on the sidewalk. In 1939 he won a competition from Tip Top Comics magazine : the publication of a drawing and a dollar. At the age of 18 he entered the comic industry in 1942. One of his first jobs was to color black areas.

But soon his first own works were published: From 1946 he drew the humorous one- pager “Hey Look!” For Stan Lee's Timely Comics for three years . Kurtzman often signed with “H. Kurtz ”and a stick figure: H. Kurtz-Man .

In 1949 Kurtzman found his place at Bill Gaines EC Comics , where he edited the Frontline Combat and Two-Fisted Tales war series . He was known for his obsession with detail and for giving contract drafters complete layouts for individual pages and for insisting that they were adhered to.

Kurtzman's discovery of his own abilities then paved the way for Mad . The magazine owes its existence to the fact that Kurtzmans complained to Gaines that the two EC editors (Kurtzman himself and Al Feldstein ) were paid differently. Gaines stated that Feldstein produced more booklets and even faster. Eventually they agreed that Kurtzman's salary would be raised if he could run a strange magazine. The first mad appeared.

Four years later, when the EC comics were having trouble selling, Kurtzman got the offer to move to the editorial board of Pageant magazine . Gaines suggested converting Mad from a 10-cent booklet to a 25-cent magazine, and Kurtzman stayed with EC, preferring to keep his own magazine. Although Gaines was primarily concerned with Kurtzman's whereabouts, this upgrade pushed Mad out of the spell of the Comics Code Authority and its censorship requirements; and at the same time ensured the magazine's survival.

Kurtzman managed the magazine's fortunes for exactly 23 issues, but long enough to introduce Alfred E. Neuman , the magazine's mascot. Neuman appeared in one of the early comic books.

In the 1950s, Kurtzman also wrote for the reissued Flash Gordon - comic strips . Ironically, these newspaper strips were one of Mad's many targets : The 1954 parody "Flesh Garden!" (Illustrated by Wally Wood) appeared there.

Farewell to Mad

When Mad sales rose in 1957 and EC discontinued its other titles, Kurtzman took a 51 percent stake in Gaine's businesses. But Gaines blocked himself and quickly replaced Kurtzman's editorial office with Al Feldstein. The incident repeatedly led to controversy (among the readership): some claimed that the magazine had reached its peak under Kurtzman and then never found its way back to its old form, but rather slipped into predictable formulas. Other voices oppose that Kurtzman's own formulaic stance would have squandered the readers' favor in a much shorter time if he hadn't had to leave so early and unexpectedly. When Kurtzman and Feldstein were producing comic books at the same time (Feldstein edits EC's other humor magazine Panic ), the quality differences between the two magazines were great. That is why Feldstein soon had the reputation of the craftsman who had replaced genius.

However, it is undisputed that Mad's influence (and sales figures) was greatest under Feldstein's aegis, while Kurtzman never again shaped the zeitgeist as decisively or had similar successes. Nothing Kurtzman tackled after Mad had the same bite or the same sharpness of close observation; Little Annie Fanny , which he drew for more than 25 years, was rather banal and clichéd by comparison.

Kurtzman was also editor of Trump, which Hugh Hefner published in 1957 and which Kurtzman's Mad- trained ideas put into a glossy format. He was later a member of an artists' association made up of himself, Will Elder , Jack Davis , Al Jaffee, and Arnold Roth , which published Humbug magazine. Humbug came in after 11 issues due to financial difficulties.

Kurtzman's last job was to lead the magazine Help! (1962-1966). Although mainly photographs appeared in the magazine, Help! many artists and writers for the first time who would later dominate the underground comix scene ( Robert Crumb , Gilbert Shelton , Jay Lynch , Skip Williamson ). The magazine also had space for John Cleese and Terry Gilliam , who first met under Kurtzman long before Monty Python was born. After 26 issues, however, Help! to give up.

In his later years Kurtzman continued to work on projects and anthologies, and taught a cartoon drawing class at the New York School of Visual Arts . Since 1988, the Harvey Awards have been given to outstanding comic artists and authors.

In the last few years before his death, Kurtzman and Will Elder returned for a quick trip to Mad .

literature

Denis Kitchen and Paul Buhle: The Art of Harvey Kurtzman - The Mad Genius of Comics . Abrams ComicArts, New York 2009. ISBN 978-0-8109-7296-4

Web links

Commons : Harvey Kurtzman  - collection of images, videos and audio files