Harvey Kurtzman's Visual History of Comics. From AARGH! to ZAP!

[@richdannys2906]

That was Frazetta referencing Wood's SF rocket gear in that Famous Funnies cover. He has admitted as much, in interviews. Frazetta had a great respect for Wood's work. Got him to fill-in, for the last few strips of JOHNNY COMET, at the very end. Wood also had a longtime fascination with Frazetta's work.

[@rybread7818]

Just ordered, as directed. Thank you sirs!

[@Therealmrmeow]

Wow, you guys are pumping these out and I am elated about it. Thanks!

[@HannahC0lleen]

Again made my day to see a new video

[@grommet3798]

Wow! Hard to believe this book is almost thirty years old! I feel like Kurtzman, alongside Kubert, Eisner, Kane, Groth, Lupoff and others, really influenced the future shape of comics criticism, and rightly so, having presided over some of the most artistic uses of its commercial appeal at several points in his career. As important to comics as say, Miles Davis was to jazz, changing idioms, inventing subgenre, challenging and fostering generations of creators, commenting aesthetically on an ostensibly lowbrow form of "disposable" or ephemeral folk art and raising it to a level of thoughtful cultural commentary.

[@grommet3798]

You guys are my favorite TV show now. Awesome, and, as always, erudite and astute commentary. I really want to see y0u guys talk about the comic strips-into-comic books era, like More Fun comics, in terms of the actual "chop shop" mechanics of cutting up strips to make pamphlets. This could include some formal elements that play off your discussion of the Smithsonian book, namely toppers on strips, strip-chopping for syndication, full page vs. half page vs. third-of-a-page Sunday space demanded by the artist, agent, syndicate, distributor, publisher, editor, newsagent or printer, etc. This could impinge on a discussion of "topper" or "header" panels, and especially strips, like "Hi and Lois," of "The Folks Upstairs" (iirc). Was it Krazy Kat that started out as either a topper or Aragones-like marginalia? This would lead into a larger discussion about original art size (and shape) versus printed size, common paper sizes, common newspaper sizes of the past 120 years, and the picture plane in general (maybe even a mention of the Golden Mean with examples). Possibly a "to scale" comparison, and finally a mention of comic strips that began as comic books like Pogo (again if I'm remembering correctly) with some discussion (with examples) of the mechanics of the reverse process (book into strip). I think a discussion of "tiers" as they were used in newspaper comics largely informs the entire discussion of why the majority of pamphlet comics presented a widescreen "landscape" medium in essentially a tall "Phi rectangle" portrait format. Maybe even creators who've commented upon it through their work (Ware, etc.). Edit'd to add: Another interesting aspect is the creation of strips as adjunct product, like the superhero strips, and the mechanics of preparing the art, tiers, chopping, guys like Plastino creating a daily in the 80s based on a House Style created and perfected in the Sixties, et cetera.

[@fad23]

I only have a little Kurtzman on my current shelves. I love my copies of his Little Annie Fanny books.

[@fad23]

I tried searching for the Playboy Comics documentary that Jim mentioned. Couldn't find it. Do you have a title?

[@grommet3798]

@@fad23 I wonder if Jim meant the anthology.

[@bbhollick]

Morning boys! Great stuff. Congrats on the auction, Ed!

[@TristanYonce]

Great one! Would love to see a Drew Friedman episode.

[@shermanium7834]

ooo do the Steranko History both volumes you need to zoom in tho lol

[@grommet3798]

That one cover on the right hand Frazetta page that you reference (lower right Buck Rogers Famous Funnies) has an antecedent in Foster (and of course possibly Raymond) and shows up on "Swipe" lists regularly. I agree with Jim that Frank was probably channeling Wally with that spaceship interior and also with Ed that guys of that generation used aircraft and submarines for reference (veteran combat experience is the very crux of the "Spacer Style" rocketpunk look). Also the Fleagles and their pals not only worked on each others' jobs, they learned each others' working methods and how to get work done and get paid. I would include Severin and Davis as guys from the same cohort, or shop, who spoke the same "war comics" visual language. Wood, Williamson, Frazetta, Heath, Severin, Davis, Kubert, with guys like Dave Stevens and Mark Schultz able to distill that approach in Eighties indie B&W action-adventure comics. The cover on the left hand Frazetta page that you make reference to does indeed influence the Studio (Kaluta, Wrightson, BWS, Jones) and similar artists, like Vess, Kelley Jones et cetera (i'd say Steranko, Gulacy, Starlin, Ploog et al), I think because Frazetta and Williamson both (as well as Torres and Krenkel) were influenced by forerunners like Foster and Raymond, and all of these had been ultimately influenced by illustrators like Allan St. John, Pyle and Wyeth, and the dozens of illustrators from the Golden Age of Children's Gift Books (Victo-Edwardian) and the art styles that influenced them at the supposed "death" of Representational Art (Arts and Crafts, Gothic Revival, Neoclassical, PRB, Symbolism, Art Nouveau, Romantic Naturalism, Art Deco, to name a few). You can see these poetic, whimsical flourishes picked up and carried lovingly forward by caring hands. I also think that these art styles and the formats of popular lowbrow publishing forms influenced the content, much in the way the key signatures, musical instrument technology and innovations in recording and broadcasting have influenced and dictated tastes in popular music.

[@TechnologyTidbits]

I LOVE THIS CHANNEL!!!!!!

[@mattprather3140]

Fun look. Thanks guys.

[@shermanium7834]

morning kayfabe and coffee rules

[@AnibalArocho]

Just scooped it up off ebay. Prices going up!

[@jyrkivainio425]

Found a signed and numbered copy of this book at Forbidden Planet on my first trip to London in 1993, when I was 15. Dropped it on my way to the cash register (it's a big book) and bent a corner. But what was I gonna do, NOT buy it? Of course I got it, and still have it.

[@russworks2882]

If you cover the Goodman Beaver series, the suppressed story "Goodman Goes Playboy" , that Kitchen was afraid to put in the collection, is reprinted in the Comics Journal #262. It's a visual feast and one of the better Goodman stories. I personally thought Kitchen printing the panels blown up one to a page damaged the integrity of the storytelling, but it's cool to look at the art that big. Still better are the same stories reprinted in the original mind-blowing full page format as they were intended to be seen in that big Will Elder book "The Mad Playboy of Art".

[@1971thedoctor]

This book looks like a who’s who of comic artists, I would recommend this book for anybody that wants to learn more about comics.

[@coreymason7662]

Good episode.

[@grommet3798]

As I look at your discussion of the MAD pages, one other really interesting topic that comes up, especially in regards to influences, parodies, and homages, is the idea of cartoonists as cohorts, or generations, both by year of birth and by year of first publication. The magic years of the mid-to-late Roaring Twenties show up again and again when you look at the birth year of many of the Atomic and Silver Age giants. Simon, Kirby, Eisner, Siegel, Shuster and Kane - the Golden Age greats (born in the Teens) were elder statemen, almost a decade older than Wood, Kurtzman, Kubert, Frazetta (all of them Depression-era dead end kids of the Greatest Generation who were angels with dirty faces, brought up on gangster movies, Tijuana bibles and breadlines). Before them, closer to the turn of the century, are Foster, Raymond, Caniff. After the guys born around 1925, there's a later cluster, and then another. They come up in generations for the first seventy years, their boy- and girlhoods influenced by the same comic strips, then comic books, and kids books, as well as the fine art of the time, or their reaction against it. Note that Kurtzman parodies famous comic strips as well as comic books in his comic book magazine,, Flash Gordon and Terry and the Pirates alongside Batman and Superman. Foster, Raymond, Caniff, Kane, Siegel and Shuster are "old" fuddie-duddies from a previous cohort whose work influenced Kurtzman and Wood as kids and who they in turn learned from and made fun of.

[@grommet3798]

Kurtzman and Elder's Little Annie Fanny, as well as Mulally and Embleton's Oh, Wicked Wanda, and the work of the cartoonists who appeared in the pages of Playboy and Penthouse, did carry forward (and parody) the Fifties/Sixties Rocketpunk/Atomprep spirit of the "Man's World," along with the "naughty pictures" aspects of the Tijauna bibles, into the hands of the hippies of the underground comix. LAF started in '62, and although OWW didn't get going till '73, it handed on that thread into the hands of the Silver*Reach generation.

[@grommet3798]

As you guys mention with the discussion of Humbug, humor can be very ephemeral, especially parody that attempts to be current and topical. Being "current" quickly makes something dated. There is a wonderful back called "A Sub-Treasury of American Humor" which presents many of the greats in the field, over two centuries, and almost all of it reads as VERY specific, even the Bierce, Twain, EB White, James Thurber, etc.

[@sketchv]

Here's Robert Williams speaking on Woverton's influence: kzbin.info/www/bejne/a3W4oZmXfLWrncU

[@comicymascomicconpoderosos8513]

Wooow 🤘🤘🤘

[@HannahC0lleen]

Lolll why was everything except the zap covers in color??

[@ericnoble5194]

Too late, the Kayfabe effect has struck. When this video came out, there was a copy on Amazon for $40. Now it’s $80.