Number 145

Kurtzman Cuts To The Core

When I look back on Harvey Kurtzman's career, and especially his satiric comic book stories, I think of two things: He was lucky to have good friends who were such great cartoonists, and he saw through to the core of what he was satirizing.

These two 3-pagers are from Humbug #3, October 1957. Kurtzman satirizes a current popular movie and a current television show, getting maximum laughs with minimum space.

The "A.P.B. On The M.O. At The O.K. Corral" takes on the Burt Lancaster movie, "Gunfight At The O.K. Corral." My friend, Eddie,* who sent me the scans I used for these stories, asked me one time, "Is the O.K. Corral [shootout] the most important event in American history or what?" He was referring sarcastically to the then popular movie Tombstone, and the surge of interest in an event that in real life wasn't as dramatic as the movies made it seem.

The splash panel to "A.P.B." is Davis being inspired. I don't know how much of Kurtzman is in the secondary figures, like the little Indian wearing a hat with eyeholes, the drunk passed out under the table, or even the hound dog flopped over on the floor. But the gag is pure Kurtzman, as is the rest of the strip, which, in three pages, basically takes the movie apart.

I remember "You Are There" as a once-popular CBS television show. It ended its run in October, 1957, about the same time this issue of Humbug was going off sale. Kurtzman had nothing to do with the show going off…it had just run its course. What Kurtzman got right about the show was its premise, the odd idea of a modern reporter walking around an historic event with a television camera and microphone asking questions. The assassination of Caesar is hilarious for the principals explaining the events.

Kurtzman did something obvious for the time, which was use the instantly recognizable TV star Sid Caesar as Julius Caesar. He's even got Sid Caesar's sidekick, Imogene Coca, on the sidelines sticking her tongue out. (Following behind Caesar is Howard Morris, one of his sidekicks from the show. Morris went on to play Ernest T. Bass in the Andy Griffith show.) Caesar's humor, as well as that of song parodist Stan Freberg and radio stars Bob and Ray, were elements that Kurtzman folded into his comic book stories. He also used the cartooning and caricature skills of best buddy Will Elder. Elder shared Kurtzman's vision of parody: Make it look like the original. Of the cartoonists Kurtzman worked with, I don't think anyone understood Harvey as well as Elder.

*See Eddie's blog, Chicken Fat. It's not a Mad or Kurtzman blog, but Eddie is a big Kurtzman fan and uses elements from him in his blog.

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Number 144


COVERING UP: Xela Xes: Wonder Comics by Alex Schomburg

In the war years Alex Schomburg was in demand by comics publishers for his covers. The eye-popping, continually inventive scenes of superheroes clobbering nasty Nazis and Japanese made the books fly off the racks. Several publishers used him. After the war he toned down his approach somewhat; there were still covers of superheroes clobbering gangsters or crooks, but the covers weren't as cluttered with men and machines.

These five covers he did for Nedor in 1947 and 1948 are some of his best. He used airbrush as his medium. I don't know whether that was his idea or the publishers, but whatever, these covers worked. He must've felt his airbrush artwork was different enough to sign a pseudonym, so he became Xela.

Three of the covers shown here have the typical damsel in distress (D-I-D) covers. Those are the ones featuring the character Wonderman. The blonde on the other covers is Tara, a Fiction House-styled babe with boyfriend trailing as she adventured on various planets. It's interesting that when women are the titular (no pun intended) characters, they can be shown kicking butt. Otherwise it's the tried and true D-I-D cover: muscular hero coming to the rescue of voluptuous babe.

And voluptuous they are…I'm not sure who did this sort of thing better, but the girls on these covers are pin-up lovers' dreams. I also like the fact that each of the covers could be a poster, and that there are no cover blurbs or speech balloons to deface the artwork. Schomburg's--Xela's--artwork speaks for itself. No words were needed.

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Number 143


Walt Kelly's The Brownies and the Ooglies!


I've spent the past 50 years with and admiring Walt Kelly's work. This is the sort of heresy that will call out Kelly's Pogo fans to scream profanities, toss a noose over a tree limb and wave torches under my window: as much as I love Pogo, I most love his comics written and drawn for kids.

Pogo went from being a kids' comic book feature to adult topical satire in newspapers. It is more grounded in its time. It was in his comics for kids that he didn't need to refer to current events, to aim his humor at hip adults. All kids care about is that it's fun to read. He gave them that. Not only kids in a chronological sense, but those of us who are still kids in an emotionally arrested sense.

"The Ooglies," from The Brownies, Dell Four-Color #244, September 1949, appears to have been turned out quickly, but that gives it a special quality of spontaneity. My memory of reading about how Kelly worked on his comic book stories is that he took sheets of drawing paper and started to draw. He made it up as he went along. It takes a great artist to be able to do that and have it come out in some sort of cogent fashion. And, as we Kelly fans--even the torch-wavers--knew, Kelly was a really great artist.

If you want to see the past Kelly postings, go to the labels below and click on Walt Kelly.

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Number 142


Jet Powers and the Metal Monsters!


In this eight-page, fourth and final story from Jet #2, 1951, drawn by Bob Powell and written by Gardner Fox, we see: the Hiroshima bomb create living metal! Mr. Sinn surviving a crash to earth of his earth-orbiting satellite! Mr. Sinn now colored yellow instead of green! Mr. Sinn finding a way to create robots from the Hiroshima bomb living metal! Mr. Sinn's robots going after Jet Powers! Jet using his inventions: vue-disks, anti-gravity beams, electroni-magnets, and radio-controlled model planes spraying acid!

Whew. This is a fast-moving story to wind up Jet #2, and re-introduce Mr. Sinn, the racially-stereotyped Yellow Peril--in the first issue actually a Green Peril--evil scientist and villain.

Previous postings from Jet #2 are in Pappy's #139, Pappy's #136, and Pappy's #133.

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Number 141


Dick Ayers' Ghoul Friends


Here are a couple of four-page horror stories from two 1952 Atlas comics: "Ghouls Rush In" is from Adventures Into Terror #2, and "Don't Make A Ghoul Of Yourself" is from Astonishing #16. They prove once again that good things come in small packages.

The biggest reason for their success, to me, anyway, is because of the artwork of Dick Ayers. Ayers is right up there with some of the best of the Golden Age. He could draw in several different genres. Ayers' career was longer than most of the other artists of his era. While other cartoonists were retiring or dying of old age, Dick Ayers was the Energizer Bunny. He just kept going.

Other Ayers stories have appeared in Pappy's #112, Pappy's #95 and Pappy's #50.

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Teen Idol in White Bucks

Pat Boone was seemingly made for DC, with his squeaky-clean earnest image. From 1955-57 he recorded several #1 hits. In 1959 he branched out into TV and movies, with a memorable performance in Journey to the Center of the Earth. He also published a self-help guide for teenagers called Twixt Twelve and Twenty.

DC, sensing a hot property, decided to create a comic book about him. Well, sort of.

Pat Boone was more like Tiger Beat for the 1950s. It had way more text than any comic of the time with features on hot upcoming stars (and teenage girl heart throbs) like Paul Anka, Frankie Avalon, Jimmie Rodgers. It had comic stories but they didn't feature full word balloons, instead just lines to the text, much like Doonesbury.



They also had features on dating, fashion, and Pat even contributed an advice column. We also met some of the Pat Boone Fan Club "Prexies on Parade".



There were five issues in all. Why didn't it last longer? I suspect there were a couple of reasons. First, although Boone was only 25 and had recently graduated from college, he was also a very married man with four daughters. And second, the hits just stopped coming, at least in 1959 and 1960.

One notable thing about the Pat Boone comics; they were ahead of their times racially. Here's a picture of Pat clowning around on the set of his show:



If that's not the only photograph of a black person in a DC comic in the 1950s, it's gotta be very close. And this might be the only one on the cover of a DC comic of the 1960s:



And Pat discusses racism here:



Note in particular that phrase "light my life"; his daughter Debby would years later have a monster hit called "You Light Up My Life".

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Number 140


Son of Frankenstein Friday


Here's another in my intermittent series showing Frankenstein covers. This time I even have a couple that aren't comics.

Jaybird Happening (and what kind of title is that?) is some sort of softcore porn magazine from the early '70s. Not only is it a weird title, it's a weird cover. It looks like someone took a snapshot at a party and decided to use it on a cover. Professional-looking this ain't. Oh yeah, I censored the picture of the girl. I don't want your moms writing and complaining that I'm showing you porn.

Thimk was a short-lived Mad imitation that lived for six issues, and why it went even that long I don't know. This is issue #4, December 1958. I guess the gag is that Frankenstein's monster is more popular with the young chicks than newly-drafted Elvis. Ha. Ha. Ha. Oh, that just slays me. I wonder that the guys who put out this magazine didn't end it because they all just died laughing from their own side-splitting humor.

And speaking of Mad, I have this cover from 2005.

Another monster magazine, which looks more like a fanzine than a professional newsstand publication, is Journal Of Frankenstein #1, from 1959. Sharp-eyed Pappy's readers will notice that the Frankenstein logo from the Dick Briefer comic book series of the early 1950s is swiped whole and slapped onto the cover.

Last, but surely least, Terror Tales, from January 1970, another of those cheap, cheesy horror comics from the 1970s, with their gruesome, gory covers…you know, the ones we all like because they're so sleazy, so awesomely awful, so bad they're great.

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