Bill Peckmann &Books &Comic Art &Illustration 03 Jun 2011 07:18 am
Mad Mad World
- Bill Peckmann forwarded the following material from Mad magazine taken from the collected Mad For Keeps. Here’s to Bill’s comments:
- Here’s a little something for all Harvey Kurtzman (writing and unseen rough lay outs) and Jack Davis (finished art) fans.
In 1958, Crown Publishers came out with the best of MAD collection. I believe this is the first hardcover collection of EC Comics to ever come out. Most of the book is comprised of MAD Magazine (started in ’55) stories and a few MAD Comic Book (’52 to ’55) stories.
Some of the comic book stories are printed in their original color, others without their original color. As far as I can tell, all of the work in here was written/rough laid out/edited by Harvey Kurtzman, MAD’s founder. It’s all copyrighted by EC Comics.
By the time the book came out it must have been a very bittersweet moment for Harvey because he had already left MAD, and MAD was just starting to become a commercial success. MAD went on to become an industry, rightfully so, but IMHO it never again was the “class” act that Harvey shepherded in. Also in retrospect, Kurtzman couldn’t have sustained that level for ever. After all, how many “Starry Nights” could Vincent paint?
1We’ll start off with the cover, comprised from one of the issues,
which has Harvey’s great MAD logo, Bill Elder’s border and probably
Norman Mingo’s first Alfred E. Neuman illustration.
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This is the back cover which Jack Davis embellished.
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Here’s the book’s introduction by Ernie Kovacs.
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I thought with this book we would be able to show Jack Davis’ neat
transition from “comic book” art to “magazine illustration” art.
Again, during this time period, Jack is working over Harvey’s rough layouts.
Man, what a team! Sans coloring, you can really see Harvey’s storytelling and Jack’s beautiful brush & pen line work and his masterful spotting of “blacks”.
So here is the whole comic book story.
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On to the “magazine” part. Look how sweetly Harvey laid this out,
add Jack’s hilarious art and you have perfection. Harvey always
compared Jack’s art to best strawberry ice cream sundae; I’ve
always seen it as the best sparkling jewelry ever, either way,
what eye candy!
ps: It doesn’t seem like baseball’s changed that much in 55 years.
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We’ll end on one of the early advertising spoofs and you can see
Jack is well on his way to becoming one of our national treasures.
on 03 Jun 2011 at 12:15 pm 1.Eric Noble said …
These are terrific!!!!! I love the early MAD work. Harvey Kurtzman was a brilliant writer and an astute observer of humanity. Add Jack davis’ splendid, beautiful artwork and you have a match made in heaven. Pure delight! Thank you and Bill Peckmann for sharing these.
on 04 Jun 2011 at 5:34 am 2.Stephen Macquignon said …
Beautiful pen & ink work,
What you think, Mr Furd looks a little like Harvey Kurtzman
on 04 Jun 2011 at 6:00 pm 3.Bill said …
Good eye Stephen, Mr. Furd is not quite an exact caricature of Harvey but it certainly could be his alter ego. Harvey always had a grand time making fun of himself, so it would be very easy to picture him doing all of that schtick in “Supermarkets”.
on 04 Jun 2011 at 7:07 pm 4.The Gee said …
hunh.
I never knew he included caricatures of himself in anything. Learn something new every so often, I s’pose.
The structure, the narration, the expressions and of course and the art is pert near perfect for the Supermarkets piece. It impresses me to no end. Thanks for sharing these.