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110-467: William Elder (born Wolf William Eisenberg ; September 22, 1921 – May 15, 2008) was an American illustrator and comic book artist who worked in numerous areas of commercial art but is best known for a frantically funny cartoon style that helped launch Harvey Kurtzman 's Mad comic book in 1952. Playboy publisher Hugh Hefner said, "He was a zany, and a lovable one." Longtime Mad writer-cartoonist Al Jaffee called Elder "Absolutely brilliant... he

220-413: A Jewish teacher were rounded up and deported to Auschwitz . The school's headmaster, Père Jacques , was arrested for harboring them and sent to the concentration camp at Mauthausen . Malle depicted these events in his autobiographical film Au revoir les enfants (1987). As a young man, Malle studied political science at Sciences Po from 1950 to 1952 (some sources incorrectly state that he studied at

330-493: A comic book Kurtzman describes as reading with "the same excitement ... that [he] felt about the underground comic books of twenty years later". These stories presented a view of reality quite different from the escapist entertainment typical of comics of the day, and was to influence the war and social drama work Kurtzman was soon to do at EC Comics . Kurtzman continued to shop his work around, and produced work for Ace/Periodical, Quality, Aviation Press , Timely, and

440-596: A comic book in the vein of Roy Crane 's popular comic strip, Captain Easy . The comic book differed in offering realistic stories in place of Crane's idealism, a degree of realism not yet seen in American comics. The war stories of Frontline Combat followed in mid-1951. The stories were not only about modern war, but also derived from deep in history, such as the Roman legions and Napoleonic campaigns . Kurtzman rejected

550-481: A freelance contributor to magazines such as Playboy , Esquire , Madison Avenue , The Saturday Evening Post , TV Guide , and Pageant . With Elliot Caplin he produced a poorly received comic strip, Kermit the Hermit , among other miscellaneous work. In 1958 Kurtzman proposed a strip to TV Guide parodying adult Western TV shows; its rejection particularly disappointed him. In 1959, Ballantine Books

660-432: A grade . He displayed artistic talent early and his sidewalk chalk drawings drew the attention of children and adults, who gathered around to watch him draw. He called these strips "Ikey and Mikey", inspired by Goldberg 's comic strip Mike and Ike . His stepfather also had an interest in art and took the boys to museums. His mother encouraged his artistic development and enrolled him in art lessons; on Saturdays, he took

770-459: A homage years later in a Psychology Today illustration; sixty-two years later, Mad ' s 2014 parody of the television prison series Orange Is the New Black included the image of Elder's Mole tunneling to freedom. According to Jaffee, Elder "could have been the world's greatest forger". Elder had a chameleon-like talent for mimicking the precise styles of other cartoonists, which made

880-415: A landmark U.S. Supreme Court case about the legal definition of obscenity. In Jacobellis v. Ohio , a theater owner was fined $ 2,500 for obscenity. The Supreme Court overturned the decision, finding that the film was not obscene and hence constitutionally protected. But the court could not agree on a definition of "obscene", with Justice Potter Stewart famously saying, " I know it when I see it ". Malle

990-492: A magazine, and I'm going to hire you guys." Kurtzman graduated at 16 in 1941 and went on to Cooper Union on a scholarship. Kurtzman left after a year to focus on making comic books. Kurtzman met Alfred Andriola in 1942, encouraged by a quote in Martin Sheridan's Classic Comics and their Creators where Andriola offered help to aspiring cartoonists. Kurtzman made an appointment, but Andriola's response to his work

1100-482: A number of publishers in 1962, including The Saturday Evening Post , but again it was rejected. In 1960, Harvey teamed up with publisher James Warren to co-publish Help! . Warren Publishing ran the business end, while co-ownership of the magazine allowed Kurtzman the control that he wanted, though its tight budget restricted that control. The magazine made frequent use of fumetti photographic comics, which sometimes starred celebrities such as Woody Allen and

1210-462: A page redone by Jack Davis in case publishers' rejections were due to Kurtzman's drawing style. The ambitious project did not find a willing publisher, as comics were still seen as too low-brow for such lavish treatment. Since the 1940s, crime and horror comics had been drawing fire from those worried about a rise in juvenile delinquency. The Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency brought pressure on such comic books in 1954, and EC, one of

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1320-624: A parody of Mad in 1971 that included "Citizen Gaines", a piece critical of Gaines' handling of Mad and treatment of Kurtzman. Kurtzman turned the offer down, as he felt out of step with the younger cartoonists' approach. He turned down an offer from René Goscinny in 1973 to act as the US agent for the French comics magazine Pilote . In 1973, New York's School of Visual Arts asked Kurtzman and Will Eisner to take teaching positions there in cartooning. Kurtzman had no earlier teaching experience and found

1430-934: A part of the 668th Engineer Company (Topographical) of the First Army , as part of the mapmaking team in advance of the invasion of Normandy . Sometime after returning home, he adopted the name Will Elder . In the late 1940s, Elder and former classmate Kurtzman teamed with Charles Stern to form the Charles William Harvey Studio, creating comics between 1948 and 1951 for Prize Comics and other publishers. At EC Comics , he inked Severin's pencils on stories for Weird Fantasy , Two-Fisted Tales , Frontline Combat and other titles. When Kurtzman created Mad in 1952, Elder's wacky panels, filled with background gags, immediately attracted attention, first with "Ganefs!" in Mad ' s debut issue but especially in

1540-574: A pre- Monty Python John Cleese . The first issue was cover-dated August 1960. Gloria Steinem and Terry Gilliam were among those the magazine employed. By the end of its run, Help! had introduced a number of young cartoonists who were to play a major part in the underground comix movement, including Robert Crumb , Jay Lynch , Gilbert Shelton , Spain Rodriguez , and Skip Williamson . Help! ' s most famous story starred Kurtzman's character Goodman Beaver in "Goodman Goes Playboy " in

1650-405: A publishing venture of their own: Humbug . The publication was financed and run by the artists who created it, though none of the group had business experience. Only artist Jack Davis became an equal shareholder and the only salaried employee despite declining to financially back the project; his participation was considered vital to its success. The others would joke in years to come that Davis

1760-429: A senior position at Marvel Comics, and proposed another Mad -like magazine; Kurtzman turned these opportunities down, as he felt unprepared to return to the comic book industry after being out of it for so long since leaving EC. Marvel launched Crazy Magazine without him in 1973. Michael C. Gross asked him to contribute to National Lampoon around this time. The magazine's staff revered Kurtzman and had published

1870-424: A similar but more lavish strip for Playboy . The result was Little Annie Fanny . Like Goodman Beaver, Little Annie Fanny was a pure-of-heart innocent; unlike him, she was regularly divested of her clothing. The Annie Fanny series (107 stories in all) was irregularly published in the back of Playboy for more than a quarter of a century from October 1962 through September 1988. In 2001, Dark Horse Comics published

1980-416: A son named Mike went out of their mind, seeing this mess of clothes and meat along the tracks... This is the kind of kid that Willy was." Years later, Elder still had a gruesome side to his humor, sending his wife a heart from a slaughterhouse as a Valentine's Day gift. By all accounts, Elder's humor was compulsive. Al Jaffee described a portrait Elder once painted of his son: "It was a beautiful painting. It

2090-582: A success, Kurtzman intended to continue with more books in the same vein. Kurtzman had "The Grasshopper and the Ant" printed in Esquire magazine in 1960. The strip was a social allegory of a hipster grasshopper and a hard-working ant with opposing worldviews, both of whom lose out in the end. It was a rarity for Kurtzman in that he created it in full color, rather in black-and-white lineart with color added afterward. Kurtzman once more proposed Marley's Ghost to

2200-471: A two-fisted cowboy story with an educational health message about syphilis . With the doors to EC open to him Kurtzman started getting regular work from the publisher in 1950. That spring, EC's "New Trend" line of horror, fantasy, and science fiction comics began, and Kurtzman contributed stories in these genres. His income doubled over the previous year's. In late 1950, he began writing and editing an adventure title, Two-Fisted Tales , which he proposed as

2310-524: A well-meaning naif whose trust in human nature and goodness were forever being undercut. One installment depicted the characters of Archie Comics as thoughtless hedonists, and was titled "Goodman Beaver Goes Playboy!". This parody resulted in a lawsuit from Archie Comics. Kurtzman and Elder had previously irritated the Archie publisher with a parody in Mad ("Starchie!"). Archie Comics ended up with possession of

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2420-549: Is in the details, Will Elder channeled God." Elder also drew for EC's other humor comic, Panic . His illustrated version of Clement Clarke Moore 's " T'was the Night Before Christmas " included several irreverent images, including a "Just Divorced!" sign hanging on the back of Santa Claus ' sleigh. As a result, sales of Panic were banned in the state of Massachusetts. Elder included a self-caricature, being spun around on Santa Claus' hip as Santa "filled all

2530-472: Is sometimes associated with the nouvelle vague , but his work does not directly fit in with or correspond to the auteurist theories that apply to the work of Jean-Luc Godard , François Truffaut , Claude Chabrol , Éric Rohmer and others, and he had nothing to do with Cahiers du cinéma . But Malle's work does exemplify some of the movement's characteristics, such as using natural light and shooting on location, and his film Zazie dans le Métro ( Zazie in

2640-566: The Bufferin aspirin ad campaign, hieroglyphics , a mop substituting for spaghetti, the RCA Victor dog, a toddler eating the plates, and a full coat rack including Viking helmet and deer antlers. Monty Python 's Terry Gilliam said of Elder, "I don't know if anybody's really worked at that level as intensely as Willy did. And it never seemed to distract from the center." 21st-century Mad cartoonist Evan Dorkin put it more simply: "If God

2750-642: The Daily Worker . His first published work there was assisting on issue #5 (September 1942) of Gilberton's Classic Comics , which features an adaptation of Moby Dick . His first pencil job appeared in Four Favorites #8 (December 1942). He produced a large amount of undistinguished work in 1942 and 1943, which he later called "very crude, very ugly stuff", before he was drafted in 1943 for service in World War II . Kurtzman trained for

2860-514: The Nazis in Vichy France during World War II. The second of these earned Malle his first (of three) Oscar nominations for "Best Writing, Story and Screenplay Based on Factual Material or Material Not Previously Published or Produced". Malle visited India in 1968, and made the seven-part documentary series L'Inde fantôme: Reflexions sur un voyage and the documentary film Calcutta , which

2970-528: The New Trend line of comic books at EC Comics in 1950. He wrote and edited the Two-Fisted Tales and Frontline Combat war comic books, where he also drew many of the carefully researched stories, before he created his most-remembered comic book, Mad , in 1952. Kurtzman scripted the stories and had them drawn by top EC cartoonists, most frequently Will Elder , Wally Wood , and Jack Davis ;

3080-602: The Sorbonne ) before turning to film studies at IDHEC . Malle worked as co-director and cameraman with Jacques Cousteau on the documentary The Silent World (1956), which won an Oscar and the Palme d'Or at the 1956 Academy Awards and Cannes Film Festival , respectively. He assisted Robert Bresson on A Man Escaped ( Un condamné à mort s'est échappé ou Le vent souffle où il veut , 1956) before making his first feature, Ascenseur pour l'échafaud in 1957 (released in

3190-524: The Sunday comics sections of his neighbors' newspapers. He admired a wide variety of strips, including Hamlin's Alley Oop , Caniff's Terry and the Pirates , Gould's Dick Tracy , Foster's Prince Valiant , Raymond's Flash Gordon , and Capp's Li'l Abner . He found Will Eisner 's comic book The Spirit a "standard by which other comic books would be measured", and called Eisner "

3300-504: The chauvinism of war comics which he believed he worked hard against in his own work. Remembering Kurtzman's humor work from the 1940s, Gaines proposed a humor magazine to increase Kurtzman's income, as he believed it would take far less time and effort to research. Mad debuted in August 1952, and Kurtzman scripted every story in the first twenty-three issues. The stories in Mad targeted what Kurtzman saw as fundamental untruths in

3410-466: The greatest ... a virtuoso cartoonist of a kind who had never been seen before". Eisner's page layouts had considerable influence on Kurtzman's work. At 14 Kurtzman won a cartooning contest for which he received a dollar and had his cartoon published in Tip Top Comics # 36 (April 1939). Future collaborator Jack Davis had won the same contest a few issues earlier. After winning

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3520-477: The trade paperback collections Playboy's Little Annie Fanny, Volume 1 ( ISBN   1-56971-519-X ) and Playboy's Little Annie Fanny, Volume 2: 1970–1988 ( ISBN   1-56971-520-3 ). Elder's advertising art, caricatures, cartoons, illustrations and stories were collected in the 392-page career retrospective, Will Elder: The Mad Playboy of Art ( Fantagraphics , 2003; ISBN   1-56097-603-9 ). The follow-up book, Chicken Fat (also by Fantagraphics),

3630-594: The Association for Mentally Ill Children of Westchester, which Adele continued to oversee following her husband's death. Louis Malle Malle's most famous works include the crime thriller Elevator to the Gallows (1958), the romantic drama The Lovers (1958), the World War II drama Lacombe, Lucien (1974), the period drama Pretty Baby (1978), the romantic crime film Atlantic City (1980),

3740-546: The Comics , which was published in 1991, though it was shorter than the more complete history Kurtzman had planned. Kurtzman, who had suffered from Parkinson's disease and colon cancer in later life, died at Mount Vernon, New York on February 21, 1993, of complications from liver cancer , nine months after Bill Gaines' death. The New Yorker commissioned a commemorative cartoon by Will Elder and ran an elegy by writer Adam Gopnik . Cartoonist Jules Feiffer remarked at

3850-926: The European Academy of Comic Book Art awarded him its Lifetime Achievement Award for 1972. A series of reprint projects and one-shot efforts appeared in the 1970s and 1980s, including Kurtzman Komix , published in 1976 by Kitchen Sink Press . In his later years, Kurtzman continued to work on anthologies and various other projects, including editing two volumes of a YA original anthology series, Nuts , packaged by Byron Preiss and published by Bantam Books in 1985. He oversaw reprints of his work in deluxe editions from Russ Cochran , who did The Complete EC Library , and Kitchen Sink Press , who did collections of Goodman Beaver (1984), Hey Look! (1992), and others, and reprinted Harvey Kurtzman's Jungle Book (1988). Lengthy interviews were conducted with The Comics Journal and Squa Tront . The comics industry's Harvey Award

3960-598: The February 1962 issue. The story satirized Hefner and his lifestyle, while parodying Archie comics in a much more risqué way than the previous "Starchie" parody in Mad had. The Archie characters were drinking, partying skirt-chasers home from college. Archie ' s publishers sued, and Warren agreed to settle out of court rather than risk an expensive lawsuit. The actual target of the strip had however been Hefner, who loved it; Kurtzman began working for Hefner again soon after. Kurtzman approached Hefner in 1960 with

4070-502: The Feldstein-edited Panic . Kurtzman poured himself into Mad , putting as much effort into it as he had into his war books. This defeated the purpose of having an easy-to-produce third book, but with Frontline Combat ' s cancelation, Kurtzman focused on Mad . During the early 1950s, Kurtzman became one of the writers for Dan Barry's relaunched Flash Gordon daily comic strip. He scripted two sequences for

4180-487: The Kurtzman brothers in an orphanage for three months until she secured work as a milliner . Several months later, Edith remarried to Russian-Jewish immigrant Abraham Perkes, who worked in the printing industry as a brass engraver. The Kurtzman boys kept their surname, while their mother took that of Perkes. The couple had a son Daniel on February 17, 1931. In 1934, the family moved to the more upscale Bronx , where

4290-531: The Metro , 1960, an adaptation of the Raymond Queneau novel ) inspired Truffaut to write Malle an enthusiastic letter. Other films also tackled taboo subjects: The Fire Within centers on a man about to commit suicide, Le souffle au cœur (1971) deals with an incestuous relationship between mother and son, and Lacombe, Lucien (1974), co-written with Patrick Modiano , is about collaboration with

4400-602: The U.K. as Lift to the Scaffold and in the U.S. originally as Frantic , later as Elevator to the Gallows ). A taut thriller featuring an original score by Miles Davis , Ascenseur pour l'échafaud made an international film star of Jeanne Moreau , at the time a leading stage actress of the Comédie-Française . Malle was 24 years old. Malle's The Lovers ( Les Amants , 1958), which also starred Moreau, caused major controversy due to its sexual content, leading to

4510-479: The U.S., 1990) in French. Just as his earlier films such as The Lovers helped popularize French films in the U.S., My Dinner with Andre was at the forefront of the rise of American independent cinema in the 1980s. Towards the end of his life, cultural correspondent Melinda Camber Porter interviewed Malle extensively for The Times . In 1993, the interviews were included in her book Through Parisian Eyes: Reflections On Contemporary French Arts And Culture . Malle

Will Elder - Misplaced Pages Continue

4620-528: The Wood-drawn " Superduperman ", a parody of Superman and Captain Marvel , including the copyright infringement lawsuit that National Periodicals (now DC Comics ) had recently brought against Fawcett Comics . National, the owners of Superman's copyright, threatened to file another lawsuit over the parody. EC and National shared the same lawyer, who advised Gaines to quit publishing parodies. While Gaines

4730-479: The adult-oriented, satirical Jungle Book . He edited the low-budget Help! from 1960 to 1965, a humor magazine which featured work by future Monty Python member and film director Terry Gilliam and the earliest work of underground cartoonists such as Robert Crumb and Gilbert Shelton . He brought Help! to an end after the success of the risqué Playboy feature Little Annie Fanny began to take up his time. While Annie Fanny provided much of his income for

4840-453: The annual John Wanamaker Art Contest, Kurtzman received a scholarship to attend high school at The High School of Music & Art . Future colleagues Will Elder , Al Feldstein , Al Jaffee , John Severin , and Charles Stern also attended the school. His ambitions were apparent even then; at a 2016 New York Comic Con panel, Jaffee recounted how a 15-year-old Kurtzman told his fellow students Jaffee and Elder "Someday I'm going to have

4950-547: The bills. In their Broadway studio, which Kurtzman kept open until the end of 1951, they sublet space to cartoonists such as John Severin, Dave Berg , and René Goscinny . Kurtzman had been doing crossword puzzles for publisher Martin Goodman since early in his career. A distant relative of Goodman's, Stan Lee , worked as an editor for Goodman's Timely Comics (a precursor to Marvel Comics ). He offered Kurtzman work doing one-page fillers, work that paid little. Lee named

5060-471: The cartoon Brueghel [ sic ] with his intricate portraits of a world cheerfully going mad". Elder later talked to The Comics Journal about the Goodman Beaver series, saying, "It was the best thing I ever did." While the owners of Archie had taken offense, the owner of Playboy did not. Hugh Hefner , a fan of Kurtzman and "Goodman Beaver", commissioned Kurtzman and Elder to create

5170-501: The city's large Jewish community, one that suffered generations of antisemitic oppression, and the city had fallen into economic hardship following the Russian Revolution . Shortly after World War I David emigrated to New York and Edith soon followed in what she called "a desperate journey" escaping the new Soviet Union. There the non-observant pair married in a civil ceremony. The first of their two sons, Zachary,

5280-483: The contributors to It Ain't Me, Babe , the first comic book produced entirely by women.) Kurtzman's work allowed him to be at home with his children during the day, and he gave them much of his attention. As Peter had low-functioning autism , the Kurtzmans volunteered locally for work with special needs children, and in 1986 began an annual charity auction, raising money by selling the artwork of cartoonists for

5390-512: The discovery that he did not own the rights to the strip. Harvey Kurtzman's Strange Adventures assembled a wide cast of cartoonists in 1990 to illustrate stories from Kurtzman's layouts, though the book was not a success, nor was a revival of Two-Fisted Tales . He had long planned to write a comics history, but other work had taken priority. Towards the end of his life, he agreed to collaborate with comics historian Michael Barrier to complete From Aargh! to Zap! Harvey Kurtzman's Visual History of

5500-519: The dramedy My Dinner with Andre (1981), and the autobiographical Au revoir les enfants (1987). He also co-directed the landmark underwater documentary The Silent World with Jacques Cousteau , which won the 1956 Palme d'Or and the 1957 Academy Award for Best Documentary . Malle is one of only four directors to have won the Golden Lion twice. His other accolades include three Césars , two BAFTAs , and three Oscar nominations. He

5610-442: The early Mad was noted for its social critique and parodies of pop culture. The comic book switched to a magazine format in 1955, and Kurtzman left it in 1956 over a dispute with EC's owner William Gaines over financial control. Following his departure, he did a variety of cartooning work, including editing the short-lived Trump and the self-published Humbug . In 1959, he produced the first book-length work of original comics,

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5720-440: The editor of his sole remaining publication, Gaines offered a 10% share. As this would not give Kurtzman the control he wanted, Kurtzman countered with a demand for 51%. Gaines refused, and the two parted ways. Kurtzman contacted Hefner and Gaines hired Al Feldstein to edit Mad . ... we all somehow talked ourselves into a very foolish thing, which was an artists' magazine ... All of us chipped in money, and we went into

5830-436: The empty spaces would get filled in by sub-jokes... he was an inexhaustible source." In 2004, Elder told an interviewer, "In Mad , Harvey never rejected any of my little extras in the story. I think he was much harder on the other artists, because my stuff made him laugh. As soon as he laughed I think he forgot that it didn't belong in the story!" Some viewers believe Elder's style of separate foreground and background actions

5940-664: The end of October 1945. The quantity of work allowed Kurtzman to hone his style, which became more refined and distinct. After his discharge following the war, Kurtzman found competition fierce in the comics industry, as freelancing replaced the system of packaging shops. He applied to the newspaper PM , but his portfolio was rejected by cartoon editor Walt Kelly . After a series of short-lived assignments and partnerships, Kurtzman got together with former Music and Art alumni Will Elder and Charles Stern. They opened Charles William Harvey Studio in 1947, but had difficulty getting work. The three had little business sense. Kurtzman managed

6050-564: The family lived at 2166 Clinton Avenue. Perkes was not wealthy, but managed to provide for his family during the Great Depression of the 1930s. He was a trade unionist, and the couple read the communist newspaper Daily Worker . Perkes brought young Kurtzman to work, and encouraged him to help with design and drawing and to think of himself as a professional artist. Though he was a shy boy his teachers recognized Kurtzman's intelligence in grade school and allowed him to skip

6160-414: The group desirable office space at an inexpensive rate, out of guilt for canceling Trump so quickly. Humbug ran into snags right away due to its small format, which made it difficult for consumers to find it on the newsstands. It also suffered distribution problems. For its last two issues, Humbug was printed in a standard magazine size, and the price was raised from fifteen cents to twenty-five. At

6270-530: The hospital where his third child, Elizabeth, was being born. Adele said it was the only time she had seen her husband cry. Kurtzman later said that Trump was the closest he ever came to producing "the perfect humor magazine". While the Trump artists were mulling over the situation in the Playboy offices, Roth approached with a bottle of scotch. By the time they left the office, the group had agreed to embark on

6380-504: The idea of a comic strip feature for Playboy that would star Goodman Beaver. Playboy ran a lot of cartoons, but a comic strip was something new to the magazine. After discussing ideas, Kurtzman's proposal was accepted under the condition that Goodman Beaver be transformed into a voluptuous female. Little Annie Fanny was Playboy 's first comic strip and the first multi-page comics feature in an American slick magazine . As his primary collaborator, Kurtzman had Will Elder provide

6490-557: The idealization of war that had swept the US since World War II. He spent hours in the New York Public Library in search of the detailed truth behind the stories he was writing, sometimes taking days or weeks to research a story. His research included interviewing and corresponding with GIs taking a ride aboard a rescue plane, and sending his assistant Jerry DeFuccio for a ride in a submarine to gather sound effects. (DeFuccio's first field report from this assignment

6600-710: The infantry, but was never sent overseas. He was stationed in Louisiana, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Texas. He illustrated instruction manuals, posters, and flyers, and contributed cartoons to camp newspapers, and newsletters. While there, he was invited by publisher and cartoonist L. B. Cole to draw the "Black Venus" superheroine, packaged for publisher Rae Herman 's Orbit Publications . In 1944, he did work for several local publications while stationed in North Carolina, and had several gag cartoons in Yank by

6710-412: The last minute, the page count of the eleventh issue was increased from thirty-two pages to forty-eight, reprinting material from Trump . This last issue included a self-deprecating message from Kurtzman which summarized the artists' careers and announced Humbug ' s farewell. The group followed divergent career paths following the breakup. After the demise of Humbug , Kurtzman spent a few years as

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6820-525: The late 1970s, Kurtzman's stature began to grow. His protégés such as Crumb, Spiegelman and Gilliam sang his praises, his reputation grew with the spread of comics fandom, and collector Glenn Bray published The Illustrated Harvey Kurtzman Index in 1976. He also found he had a following in Europe; his work appeared there for the first time in the French magazine Charlie Mensuel in October 1970, and in 1973

6930-667: The magazines Varsity and Parents . He did a number of children's books, four of which were collaborations with René Goscinny. He brought some samples of educational comics into the EC Comics offices—"EC" had originally stood for "Educational Comics" when it was run by Max Gaines , but his son Bill changed the company's focus and name to "Entertaining Comics" when he inherited the business. Gaines liked Kurtzman's Hey Look! samples but had no immediate use for his particular skills. Gaines directed Kurtzman to his brother, David, who gave him some low-paying work on Lucky Fights it Through ,

7040-586: The major purveyors of such fare, found their wares being refused by their distributor. Gaines brought those titles to an end and tried to replace them with the New Direction line, but by autumn 1955 the only remaining EC title was Mad . Gaines had just allowed Kurtzman to change Mad ' s format to a magazine in July, in order to keep him at EC after Kurtzman had received an offer of employment from Pageant magazine. Kurtzman had long dreamed of joining

7150-544: The one-time cartoonist Hugh Hefner had become a media mogul by the mid-1950s with his Playboy magazine. He had admired Kurtzman's Mad , and met Kurtzman in New York to express his appreciation. He told Kurtzman that if he were ever to leave Mad , a place would be waiting for him in the Hefner empire. With this promise to back him, Kurtzman demanded legal control of Mad from Gaines in the form of stocks. Reluctant to lose

7260-574: The prospect daunting, but Eisner convinced him to take the job. Eisner's class was called "Sequential Art" and Kurtzman's was "Satirical Cartooning", which focused on single-panel gag cartooning . Kurtzman had a soft touch with his students, and was well respected and well liked. He frequently had professional cartoonists appear as guest lecturers. When the school refused to publish his students' work, Kurtzman had them published in an ad-supported, student-produced anthology that came to be called Kar-Tünz . Kar-Tünz ran for fifteen years. Beginning in

7370-723: The publishing business, which artists should never, never do, for the simple reason that they lose sight of the practical considerations of business survival. Art becomes everything and the marketplace becomes secondary. Hefner employed Kurtzman from April 1956. The slick, full-color Trump appeared on newsstands in January 1957. Cartoonists who contributed to Trump included Mad regulars such as Elder, Wood, Davis, and Jaffee, as well as Russ Heath and newer artists such as Irving Geis , Arnold Roth , and R. O. Blechman . Writers Mel Brooks , Roger Price , Doodles Weaver , and Max Shulman also made contributions. The fifty-cent magazine

7480-497: The rest of his career, he continued to produce an eclectic body of work, including screenwriting the animated Mad Monster Party? in 1967 and directing, writing and designing several shorts for Sesame Street in 1969. From 1973, Kurtzman taught cartooning at the School of Visual Arts in New York. His work gained greater recognition toward the end of his life, and he oversaw deluxe reprintings of much of his work. The Harvey Award

7590-418: The room. EC colorist Marie Severin recalled, "Will used to have this painting of a deer... I guess it was one of those 5-and-10-cent store things. It had a deer, a mountain, some trees, a path, flowers and the like, and he'd change it with the seasons! If it was winter he'd paint snow on the deer, and then he would paint over that and put the sun out for the springtime with flowers coming up." Kurtzman recounted

7700-406: The satiric effect stronger. This ability was showcased in such pieces as "Mickey Rodent!" (a takeoff on Mickey Mouse and Disney in general), "Starchie!" ( Archie Comics ), "Bringing Back Father!" ( George McManus ' Bringing Up Father strip), "Gasoline Valley!" ( Frank King 's Gasoline Alley ), and others. Such was Elder's ability that some of these parodies featured specific observations about

7810-473: The second issue with "Mole!", satirizing the popular mid-1940s Dick Tracy villain named "The Mole". The Mad lampoon depicted the successive efforts of prisoner Melvin Mole to tunnel away from the prison, first with a spoon, then with a toothpick and finally with a nostril hair. The wild exaggeration in this story left such a strong impression that the character was sometimes quoted ("Dig! Dig!") and even given

7920-430: The slick magazine publishing world, and had been trying to convince Gaines to publish Mad in a larger, more adult format. The August issue of Pageant featured an article "Now Comics Have Gone Mad ", and Pageant ' s publisher Alex Hillman offered Kurtzman a job. With the prospect of losing his lone editor and writer, Gaines gave in to Kurtzman's demands. The magazine-format twenty-fourth issue of Mad (July 1955)

8030-427: The source materials' art styles, with Elder switching illustrative gears in midpanel. Elder had this to say about his mimicry: Through imitation, I found an avenue of expression... if you're going to make an imitation of something, a fascimile, it's got to be convincing. When you convince people, then you can turn the tables and shock them as a result. Accuracy was part of it. If I could fool people to think that this

8140-572: The spoof included six separate picket signs, posters and other notices proclaiming that "Batboy and Rubin" was a comedic imitation, e.g.: "Not a spittoon, not a cartoon, not a harpoon, but a LAMPOON!" Parodying specific targets became a staple of Mad . Beginning April 1954, the bimonthly Mad went monthly after the cancelation of Frontline Combat , whose sales had flagged when the Korean War ended. Soon, large numbers of Mad imitators sprang up from other publishers, as well as from EC itself with

8250-419: The stockings; then turned with a jerk"—the jerk, of course, is Elder. Elder was known as an inveterate prankster. As a child, he once cut out paper silhouettes of a man carrying a knife and a woman. Attaching them to a rotating record turntable, he projected their image onto the windowshade, and began screaming. People on the outside of the building saw what they thought was an assailant chasing his victim around

8360-509: The story's copyright. When the full Goodman Beaver series was reprinted by Kitchen Sink Press , the story could not legally be included. However, after Archie Comics failed to renew its copyright, the original "Goodman Beaver Goes Playboy!" went into public domain and was published in Fantagraphics ' Comics Journal . Publisher and critic Gary Groth wrote that Elder's artwork in the Goodman Beaver stories "clinched his reputation as

8470-399: The storyline. That's what Chicken Fat does... it advances the flavor of the soup and, as we all know now, too much chicken fat will kill you!" Elder's rampant insertion of background gags set the tone for the comic book, quickly spreading into the panels of his fellow artists and imitators of Mad . Kurtzman described their collaborative process: "I would write a story, and as if by magic, all

8580-483: The strip Hey Look! , and Kurtzman produced 150 episodes of it from 1946 until 1949. At a Music and Art reunion in early 1946 Kurtzman met Adele Hasan, who was one of the staff members at Timely and was dating Will Elder. She fell for Kurtzman, confiding to Al Jaffee that he "was the kind of kind [she would] like to marry". Later in the year, Timely ran a "Now You Can Be the Editor!" contest whose ballots Hasan

8690-490: The strip's labor-intensive, fully painted full-color final rendering. Little Annie Fanny began appearing in Playboy in 1962. Kurtzman and Warren disagreed on Kurtzman's editorial decisions on Help! , and Kurtzman found himself unsatisfied with the partnership. Help! ' s sales were declining, and the magazine quietly came to an end with its twenty-sixth issue, cover-dated September 1965. This allowed Kurtzman and Elder to focus full-time on Little Annie Fanny . Hefner

8800-521: The strip, with portions pencilled by Frank Frazetta . The strip soon became one of Mad ' s targets in "Flesh Garden!", drawn by Wood, who had earlier assisted Barry on the Flash Gordon strip. In 1954, Kurtzman dreamed up a full-color, 100-page adaptation of Dickens ' A Christmas Carol called Marley's Ghost , and proposed the project to Simon & Schuster and other publishers. The proposal included seven finished pages, as well as

8910-435: The subjects parodied, inspired by the irreverent humor found in college humor magazines . They were developed in the same incremental way Kurtzman had developed for the war stories, and his layouts were followed faithfully by the artists who drew them—most frequently, Will Elder, Jack Davis and Wally Wood. Mad did not have instant success, but found its audience by the fourth issue, which quickly sold out. The issue featured

9020-471: The subway to Manhattan for formal art instruction. His parents had him attend the left-leaning Jewish Camp Kinderland , but he did not enjoy its dogmatic atmosphere. Though not ashamed of their Jewish heritage, neither of the Kurtzman brothers agreed to have a Bar Mitzvah . Kurtzman fell in love with comic strips and the newly emerging comic books in the late 1930s. Unsatisfied with what he found in his parents' newspapers, he searched through garbage cans for

9130-419: The time Elder and his playmates found a stock of fresh meat as a child: "These kids collected a bunch of clothes and they dressed the meat in clothes and spread the combination of meat and clothes along the right-of-way for about half a mile on the railroad tracks. Then Willy started shrieking at the top of his voice that Mikey had fallen down onto the railroad tracks. Naturally every woman for miles around who had

9240-774: The time that cartooning had lost its Orson Welles . Kurtzman stood 5 feet 6 inches (168 cm) and was of slight build. He had an unassuming demeanor; humorist Roger Price likened him to "a beagle who is too polite to mention that someone is standing on his tail". Rolf Malcolm described him as someone who smiles little and speaks slowly. Al Jaffee said he "was not an easy person to get too close to". Kurtzman and wife Adele (née Hasan ) were married in September 1948. They had three daughters and one son: Meredith, born July 28, 1950; Peter, born June 29, 1954; Elizabeth, born January 21, 1957; and Cornelia "Nellie", born April 15, 1969. (Meredith in 1970 went on to become one of

9350-583: The two married that September. In 1948 Kurtzman produced a Sunday comic strip, Silver Linings , which ran infrequently in the New York Herald Tribune between March and June. Lee had Hey Look! brought to an end in 1949 so Kurtzman could concentrate on longer features for Timely's family-oriented line. Kurtzman was assigned artwork duties for the Lee-scripted Rusty , an imitation of Chic Young 's comic strip Blondie , but

9460-430: Was a 10-word telegram to Kurtzman reading "MANY BRAVE HEARTS ARE ASLEEP IN THE DEEP GLUB GLUB.") The stories gave a sympathetic look to both sides of a conflict, regardless of nationality or ethnicity. He sought to tell what he saw as the objective truth about war, deglamorizing it and showing its futility, though the stories were not explicitly anti-war. Kurtzman was given a great deal of artistic freedom by Gaines, but

9570-498: Was a demanding editor and delivered critiques to Kurtzman that could reach twenty pages. Kurtzman participated in a number of film projects beginning in the late 1960s. He co-scripted the stop-motion animated film Mad Monster Party? (1967), a job he got through the recommendation of Jack Davis, who had been doing character designs for the film's production company Rankin/Bass . Kurtzman wrote, co-directed, and designed several short animated pieces for Sesame Street in 1969; he

9680-403: Was a luxurious, more risqué version of Mad , and sold well. Unfortunately, Hefner began to have financial problems, and canceled Trump after its second issue. The magazine had been a success in the market, but had already accrued $ 100,000 in expenses, about which Hefner quipped, "I gave Harvey Kurtzman an unlimited budget, and he exceeded it." Hefner delivered the news in person to Kurtzman—in

9790-516: Was all in very somber blues and black tones, very dark and brooding. After he finished it, he couldn't resist putting two little red dots on the kid's neck, as if a vampire had been there. He was always driven by the notion that something should be funny." Elder collaborated frequently throughout his career with Kurtzman. After leaving Mad in 1957, the two worked together on a string of short-lived humor magazines: Trump , Humbug and Help! . For Help! , Elder and Kurtzman created Goodman Beaver ,

9900-628: Was an American cartoonist and editor. His best-known work includes writing and editing the parodic comic book Mad from 1952 until 1956, and writing the Little Annie Fanny strips in Playboy from 1962 until 1988. His work is noted for its satire and parody of popular culture, social critique, and attention to detail. Kurtzman's working method has been likened to that of an auteur , and he expected those who illustrated his stories to follow his layouts strictly. Kurtzman began to work on

10010-657: Was assigned to sort through. She was disappointed that readers did not enjoy Kurtzman's Hey Look! as much as she did. She "stuffed the ballot box" in Kurtzman's favor, which prompted an astonished Stan Lee to assign Kurtzman more work. Kurtzman was given the talking animal feature Pigtales at regular freelance rates, as well as miscellaneous other assignments. As Harvey stopped by the Timely offices more frequently, he and Adele would flirt, and eventually started dating. She left Timely for college that autumn, and corresponded frequently with Kurtzman; soon she dropped out of college and

10120-595: Was born April 8, 1923. Harvey Kurtzman was born on October 3, 1924, in a tenement building on 428 East Ninety-Eighth Street in Brooklyn in New York City. David joined the Christian Science church, and when he suffered a bleeding ulcer he turned to prayer to cure it; he died from it on November 29, 1928, at age 36. The family was in such desperate financial straits that their mother placed

10230-456: Was disappointed with this type of work and began looking for other employment. He sold episodes of the one-pagers Egghead Doodle and Genius to Timely and Al Capp's Toby Press on a freelance basis. He also sold longer pieces to Toby, including episodes of his Western parody Pot Shot Pete , a short-lived series that hinted at the pop-culture satire Kurtzman was to become known for. Kurtzman came across Charles Biro 's Crime Does Not Pay ,

10340-399: Was discouraging—he told Kurtzman to give up on cartooning. Kurtzman called this meeting "one of the worst days of [his] life", though he ignored Andriola's advice and continued to peddle his portfolio. Kurtzman continued to do odd jobs in 1942 until he got his first break in the comics industry at Louis Ferstadt 's studio, which produced comics for Quality , Ace , Gilberton , and

10450-413: Was himself a strict taskmaster. He insisted that the artists who drew his stories not deviate from his layouts. The artists generally respected Kurtzman's wishes out of respect for his creative authority, but some, like Bernie Krigstein and Dan Barry , felt their own artistic autonomy impinged upon. Those who worked for EC received payment based on output. Kurtzman's laborious working methods meant he

10560-414: Was less prolific than fellow EC writer and editor Al Feldstein, and Kurtzman felt financially underappreciated for the amount of effort he poured into his work. He was financially burdened with a mortgage and a family. He also detested the horror content of the books Feldstein was producing, and which consistently outsold his own work. He believed these stories had the same sort of influence on children that

10670-453: Was looking for something to replace its successful line of Mad mass-market paperback reprints after Gaines had taken it to another publisher. Ballantine had earlier published The Humbug Digest in the same format, though it fared poorly in the market. Kurtzman proposed a book of original material designed for the format, which Ian Ballantine , with reservations, accepted on faith out of respect for Kurtzman. Harvey Kurtzman's Jungle Book

10780-550: Was made a Fellow of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts in 1991. Malle was born into a wealthy industrialist family in Thumeries , Nord , France, the son of Françoise (Béghin) and Pierre Malle. During World War II , Malle attended a Catholic boarding school near Fontainebleau. As an 11-year-old he witnessed a Gestapo raid on the school, in which three Jewish students, including his close friend, and

10890-420: Was mimicked by Louis Malle in his 1960 film Zazie dans le Métro , in a restaurant scene where the background action begins to take precedence over the main character. “I thought people would notice and would laugh," said Malle, "but nobody did." Elder had drawn the article "Restaurant!" in 1954; the Mad piece was about a family and its meal, but the backgrounds were filled with numerous sight gags including

11000-475: Was more successful than anticipated, and had to be reprinted, an unusual occurrence in magazine publishing. The new presentation was ambitious, and included meticulously rendered advertisement parodies and text pieces by humorists such as Ernie Kovacs , Stan Freberg , and Steve Allen . It was around this time that Kurtzman introduced Mad ' s gap-toothed mascot and his slogan, "What, me worry?", whom Feldstein later named Alfred E. Neuman . Elsewhere,

11110-635: Was named in Kurtzman's honor in 1988. He was inducted into the Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame in 1989, and his work earned five positions on The Comics Journal ' s Top 100 Comics of the 20th Century. Harvey Kurtzman spoke little of his parents in interviews, and not much is known of their pre-American lives. David Kurtzman and Edith née Sherman grew up in Ukraine in Odesa , and were literate urbanites. They belonged to

11220-418: Was named in his honor in 1988. Kurtzman toured and gave speeches frequently to fans in the 1980s. Kurtzman had reconciled with Gaines by the mid-1980s, and in collaboration with Elder, illustrated 19 pieces and covers for Mad from 1986 to 1989. Kurtzman brought Little Annie Fanny to an end in 1988, amid failing health, a poor relationship with Playboy cartoon editor Michelle Urry , and resentment over

11330-492: Was particularly proud of the Phil Kimmelman-animated Boat , in which a left prosthetic-legged sea captain voiced by Hal Smith orders a series of increasingly larger numerals to load into a boat, eventually sinking it. In 1972, he appeared in a television advertisement for Scripto pens. Kurtzman turned down a number of well-paying opportunities in the 1970s. In early 1972, Stan Lee offered Kurtzman

11440-767: Was published in 2006 and compiles drawings, sketches, cartoons and doodles by Elder, most of which had never been published. In 2009, Fantagraphics published a complete boxed collection of Humbug . Elder died on May 15, 2008, from complications due to Parkinson's disease in Rockleigh, New Jersey . Elder was posthumously inducted into the Harvey Awards Hall of Fame in 2019 at New York Comic Con , alongside fellow Mad contributors Jack Davis , Marie Severin , John Severin , and Ben Oda . Harvey Kurtzman Harvey Kurtzman ( / ˈ k ɜːr t s m ə n / ; October 3, 1924 – February 21, 1993)

11550-1042: Was released in cinemas. Concentrating on real India, its rituals and festivities, Malle fell afoul of the Indian government, which disliked his portrayal of the country, in its fascination with the pre-modern, and consequently banned the BBC from filming in India for several years. Malle later said his documentary on India was his favorite film. Malle later moved to the United States and continued to direct there. His later films include Pretty Baby (1978), Atlantic City (1980), My Dinner with Andre (1981), Crackers (1984), Alamo Bay (1985), Damage (1992) and Vanya on 42nd Street (1994, an adaptation of Anton Chekhov 's play Uncle Vanya ) in English; and Au revoir les enfants (1987) and Milou en Mai ( May Fools in

11660-423: Was the first mass-market paperback of original comics content in the United States, and to Kurtzman biographer Denis Kitchen was a precursor to the graphic novel . Whereas his Mad stories had been aimed at an adolescent audience, Kurtzman made Jungle Book for adults, which was unusual in American comics. Jungle Book sold poorly, but remained a favorite among its small number of devoted fans. If it had been

11770-424: Was the only one to make any money from Humbug . With Kurtzman in the lead the reinvigorated, close-knit group set out to produce a classy publication in the vein of college humor magazines , but aimed at a general readership. Along with the pop-cultural satire that had been the staple of Mad and Trump , Humbug included more topical and political satire, mostly from writers other than Kurtzman. Hefner provided

11880-462: Was the real item, and then suddenly make them realize at the last moment that it wasn't, that in itself is surprisingly funny. Elder's signature style, with extra humorous detail added upon humorous detail, is routinely described as "chicken fat," a reference to soup preparation. As Elder told an interviewer, "The term just came out of what we both [Kurtzman and Elder] knew were the parts of the strip that gave it more flavor but did very little to advance

11990-931: Was the star from the beginning. He had a feel for the kind of satire that eventually spread everywhere." Elder was inducted into the Comic Book Hall of Fame in 2003. In 2018, the Comics Reporter ' s Tom Spurgeon described Elder as "an amazing artist, a sneaky spot-holder on the top 20 of the 20th century". Born Wolf William Eisenberg in the Bronx , New York, Elder was known in his teen years as Wolfie . Elder would later joke about his poor slum upbringing: "The people who had garbage were rich; they had something to throw out." Elder attended New York's High School of Music and Art together with future Mad artists Harvey Kurtzman , John Severin , Al Jaffee and Al Feldstein . During World War II , he served as

12100-443: Was weighing this advice, Kurtzman discovered a legal precedent that backed Mad ' s right to parody. Gaines hired the author of that precedent to write a brief substantiating EC's position, but the lawyer sided with National. Gaines consulted a third lawyer, who advised Gaines to ignore the threat and continue publishing parodies. National never filed suit. When Kurtzman parodied National's Batman character just four issues later,

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