Harvey Kurtzman: The Man Who Created Mad and Revolutionized Humor in America

Abstract

The second part of the subtitle of Bill Schelly's massive biography of Harvey Kurtzman may seem to some like hyperbole, but a very strong case for the claim that Kurtzman “revolutionized humor in America” could certainly be made based only on his creation of Mad. Even though Kurtzman left Mad after just four years, he set the satiric publication on its groundbreaking path, and the effect of Mad on American humor, politics, and culture has proved inestimable. The story of Kurtzman's Mad years is the centerpiece of this exhaustive biography, but that is only a part of an engrossing and influential life.The biography contains three parts: “Cartoonist,” “Editor,” and “Icon.” The first section traces Kurtzman's early years: his childhood in Brooklyn and the Bronx; his early love of comic strips; his youthful attempts at cartooning, including drawing comic strips in chalk on his neighborhood streets; his fascination with slick magazines like Collier's, Saturday Evening Post, and the New Yorker; his education at New York City's High School of the Arts, where his classmates included Al Jaffee, Will Elder, and Al Feldstein; and his first published comic art. After graduation and service in the army during World War II (he never went overseas), he returned to New York, determined to begin a career as a cartoonist. His first successful strip was Hey Look!, at first a bit crude in its drawing, but a clear precursor of what was to come. Schelly chronicles Kurtzman's struggles as he freelanced, taking a series of what could only be termed hack assignments, such as Rusty, his blatant Blondie imitation for Stan Lee. Kurtzman's luck and life changed when he met William Gaines and began freelancing for EC Comics.He first wrote and drew horror stories for Vault of Horror and Tales from the Crypt (both 1950–1953), then moved to science fiction in Weird Science (1950–1955). He became editor of Two-Fisted Tales (1950–1955), writing all the stories, then drawing elaborate story boards that artists like Wallace Wood and Jack Davis followed to make the finished art. This process began a pattern that Kurtzman followed for much of his career, functioning like a film director in the world of comics. Schelly fully covers the inception and execution of Kurtzman's groundbreaking war comics, illustrated with many reprints of the artwork. Kurtzman's realism about war, his avoidance of jingoistic patriotism, his depiction of the horrors of war, and an undercurrent of an anti-war stance made comic books like Two-Fisted Tales and Frontline Combat (1951–1954) stand out among competitors.As the Korean War wound down in 1952 and sales of the war comics began to decline, Kurtzman talked Gaines into a new idea: a satiric, humorous comic book. Several titles were suggested, but they eventually decided on Mad. The first issue, published in August 1952, contained four stories, all written by Kurtzman and drawn from his story boarding by Jack Davis, Wallace Wood, Will Elder, and John Severin. Thus began the format that would continue while Mad was a comic book.The new comic book was not an immediate sales success; the first three issues all lost money. But Kurtzman and his artists were finding themselves, and reader mail was voluminous and enthusiastic. With Mad #4 and its cover story, “Superduperman,” the comic book took off, and the phenomenon we know as Mad began in earnest. This parody of America's most famous comic book hero struck a chord in readers and established the Mad approach and point of view. The issue earned a profit, and subsequent sales soared, soon surpassing one million copies per issue. Other notable parodies included movies, “Ping Pong,” capitalizing on the re-release of King Kong, and more comics, including another superhero satire, “Bat Boy and Rubin,” and a take-off of Archie comics, “Starchie.” Mad's irreverent take on American life and culture resonated with increasingly rebellious teenagers, but also with college students and intellectual adults, offering a beacon of nonconformity in the increasing sterility of the 1950s.But the empire struck back, in the form of attacks on comic books and their supposed effect on young readers. As Harvey Kurtzman turned thirty in 1954, the Comics Code was adopted, which resulted in the sanitizing and censorship of comics. Kurtzman, Gaines, and EC dodged the necessity of gaining the Comics Code of America's Seal of Approval by converting Mad from a comic book to a magazine. In March 1955, Mad #23 was published, the last of the Mad comic books, and in May, Mad #24 became the first issue of Mad magazine. Although many see this change as the end of the golden years of Mad, the magazine continued its evolution and became even more popular.Faced with relatively low pay and a growing family, Kurtzman was always in a financial squeeze. In March 1956, he met with Hugh Hefner, publisher of another upstart magazine whose sales were soaring and whose cultural impact was also immense. Kurtzman's early love of upscale, slick magazines never abated, and he accepted Hefner's offer to found and edit a new humor magazine, Trump. In April, Gaines fired Kurtzman. In July, Mad #28 appeared, Kurtzman's last issue as editor. An era in Mad ended, as did an era in Kurtzman's life.In a sense, his story is anticlimactic after that. Trump was suspended after just two issues, and while another attempt at a humor magazine, Humbug, was more successful, it folded after eleven issues. Mad rose even higher in sales, and William Gaines reaped additional profits from Mad paperbacks, consisting largely of reprints of Kurtzman material, for which Kurtzman received no pay. (He sued, but a settlement would not come for years.) In 1960, he began Help!, which was published until 1965. Kurtzman and Will Elder were hired by Hefner in 1962 to draw and write a comic strip for Playboy. Little Annie Fanny ran until 1988, providing Kurtzman with a steady income, even though restrictions on the strip—the necessity to make Annie appear nude as often as possible, backlash from the emerging women's liberation movement, and Hefner's constant interference with even the most minor editorial and artistic matters—made the writing and drawing increasingly difficult and unsatisfying.But in another sense, the post-Mad years brought about a rise in stature, as younger comic artists who had been influenced by Kurtzman's Mad and by his other work began their careers. In the 1970s, underground comic artists like Robert Crumb celebrated Kurtzman and sometimes collaborated with him. Kurtzman was venerated in Europe, especially in France. The rise of comics conventions gave him another venue in which he was honored and celebrated. In the 1980s, graphic novels emerged, most notably Maus, and its writer/artist Art Spiegelman cited Kurtzman as an important influence.Schelly also deals with Kurtzman's personal and domestic life, showing a man devoted to his wife and children, especially his care of their autistic son. The family lived comfortably and happily, but because of a series of bad business decisions and unfavorable publishing agreements, Kurtzman never attained the wealth that his achievements and stature might have deserved. In 1982, Kurtzman was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease, which made writing and drawing increasingly difficult. After Al Feldstein retired as the editor of Mad in 1984, Kurtzman and Gaines reconciled, leading in 1985 to the first work by Kurtzman and Elder in Mad in nearly thirty years, a back cover signed only as “WEHK.” Kurtzman worked on From Aargh! To Zap!, his history of American comics, including a good selection of his own work, published in 1990. On February 21, 1993, Harvey Kurtzman died at age 68. The obituary in the New York Times the next day said that Kurtzman “helped found Mad magazine.” Art Spiegelman protested, and they published a corrected obituary the next day, noting that Kurtzman alone was responsible for Mad's inception.Biographer Bill Schelly drew on the numerous interviews Kurtzman granted over the years, but he also interviewed many of Kurtzman's family, colleagues, and friends. The result is a full biography of an influential comic artist whose work on Mad truly did change not only American humor but also American culture and attitudes. Those who know Kurtzman only as the genius behind the founding of Mad will learn in detail his earlier and later efforts, as well as get a good sense of the evolution of comic book art in the twentieth century. If the details of a whole life at times border on the trivial or the mundane, the arc of the story is always interesting, and Schelly's achievement will ensure that Harvey Kurtzman's life and work are fully and authoritatively recorded. The book is amply and lavishly illustrated on quality paper and with copious reproductions in black and white and in color. This biography will appeal to any person interested in Mad, in the history of comics, and in American popular culture and humor.