Table Of ContentHARVEY
KURTZMAN
THE MAN WHO CREATED
THE MAN WHO CREATED
AND REVOLUTIONIZED
humor
IN AMERICA
A BIOGRAPHY BY
BILL SCHELLY
FOREWORD BY TERRY GILLIAM
Harvey Kurtzman:
The Man Who Created Mad
and Revolutionized
Humor in America
A Biography By
Bill Schelly
Fantagraphics Books
7563 Lake City Way NE
Seattle, Washington 98115
Executive Editor: Gary Groth
Editor: Kristy Valenti
Editorial assistance: RJ Casey, Daniel Germain,
Daniel Johnson, Kim Rost Bridges
Designer: Keeli McCarthy
Production: Preston White
Associate Publisher: Eric Reynolds
Publisher: Gary Groth
This edition of Harvey Kurtzman: the Man Who Created Mad and
Revolutionized Humor in America copyright © 2015 Fantagraphics
Books. Content copyright © 2015 Bill Schelly. Introduction copyright
© 2015 Terry Gilliam. Soldier photos © 2015 David Douglas Duncan. All
images copyright their respective copyright owner. All rights reserved.
Permission to reproduce material must be obtained from the publisher.
Special thanks to the Kurtzman family, who permitted the use of
several images in this book.
To receive a catalog of comics, graphic novels, prose novels, and other fine
works of artistry, call 1-800-657-1100, or visit www.fantagraphics.com.
You may order books at our website or by phone.
ISBN: 978-1-60699-761-1
Library of Congress Control Number: 2014954774
First Fantagraphics printing: May 2015
Printed in Singapore
Front jacket photo: Kurtzman at the Playboy offices (1976), courtesy
of E. B. Boatner. Back jacket photo: from Help! #9 (April 1961).
Back flap: author photo courtesy of Adam Haney.
Endpapers: “Superduperman” and “Bat Boy and Rubin” were
written by Harvey Kurtzman and drawn by Wallace Wood; they ran
in Mad #4 (April–May 1953) and Mad #8 (December 1953–January
1954) respectively.
A BIOGRAPHY BY BILL SCHELLY
FANTAGRAPHICS
DEDICATION
To my daughter Tara
CONTENTS
Foreword by Terry Gilliam ......vii Author’s Preface .....................ix
PART ONE: CARTOONIST PART TWO: EDITOR
1 A Community in Chalk .....17 10 A War Comic with
2 The Castle on the Hill ........33 a Conscience ...................165
3 The Little Schnook ............53 11 A New Kind of
4 Kurtzman in Uniform .......71 Comic Book ....................185
5 “We of a Certain Milieu” ...83 12 Mad Beginnings .............217
6 The Three Musketeers .......99 13 From GI to General ........241
7 Desperation ......................121 14 Mad Takes Off ................257
8 Son of Gaines ...................131 15 Mad Goes Monthly ........277
9 From Zero to Sixty ...........145 16 Mad at Each Other .........299
17 Mad Goes “Legit” ...........315
18 Nine Glorious Months ...343
19 Humbug ..........................359
20 Climbing Back ................387
21 Help! ...............................409
22 A Lifeline .......................435
PART THREE: ICON
23 Children of Mad .............461
24 Kurtzman in
the 1970s .........................479
25 Tuesday Afternoons
with Harvey ...................515
26 Being Harvey
Kurtzman .......................531
27 “It Burns Me Up!” ..........561
28 In Memoriam ..................581
Acknowledgments ...............585
Chronology ...........................591
Endnotes ...............................603
Index .....................................631
vi
vii
FOREWORD
By Terry Gilliam
In the beginning was the word
And the word was Mad
And Harvey Kurtzman was God
(or so it seemed to many of my generation).
He gave us the eyes to see the world anew, to relish all of its absurdities.
He provided us with ammunition to attack and laugh at the system, at
dumb authority, at fools. He taught us to recognize Humbug when it arose
and, hopefully, Trump it with satire.
We worshipped Harvey.
He offered Help! to many, but he gave me a job. I was in heaven! I was his
assistant!
Harvey was probably the most important teacher in my life and one of
the most vital cultural forces in the second half of the twentieth cen-
tury, yet most people have never heard of him. I think a part of Harvey
would appreciate the irony. For such a seminal force, he was surprisingly
humble and generous and small . . . a kind of unsung Mother Theresa
for American comics artists, comedians, goofballs, outsiders, brainiacs
and troublemakers. He inspired and nurtured so many who subsequently
became successful and well known. His work still reverberates in those
of us who were infected and we’ve passed it on . . . It’s dangerously com-
municable. If you plot its flow you can argue that Harvey’s influence was
the hidden epidemic that changed much of our society for the better.
Hopefully, science won’t find a cure for it.
Kurtzman in 1973. Courtesy of Ben Asen.
viii
ix
“Truth is beautiful. What is false offends.”
—Harvey Kurtzman (1977)
Author’s Preface
HARVEY KURTZMAN’S CREATION of Mad, in 1952, overshadows all of the
other stellar accomplishments in his remarkable fifty-year career in the
popular arts. His work as the editor, artist, designer and writer behind
Mad, first as a comic book and then as a magazine, set the pattern for one
of the greatest publishing success stories of the century.
Time magazine’s Richard Corliss wrote, “Dreaming up and writ-
ing Mad, [Harvey] Kurtzman virtually invented what would become the
era’s dominant tone of irreverent self-reference: one form of pop culture
mocking all other forms, and itself.” In the New Yorker, Adam Gopnik
stated, “Almost all American satire today follows a formula that Harvey
Kurtzman thought up.”
In the early 1950s, Holden Caulfield railed against the “phonies” of
the world in The Catcher in the Rye. Mad exposed them. It questioned
the status quo at a time of social conformity, creating a mindset that grew
into what came to be called the “counterculture.” Cartoonist and histo-
rian R. C. Harvey wrote, “Through all the years of Mad, Kurtzman’s in-
fluence on the American public was incalculable. Who can say whether
the Vietnam War protest among American youth was not in some way
inspired by the satire in Mad . . .?”
Mad is a household name, yet the name of the man who invented it
is known by relatively few, mainly those who study cartoons and comic
books. That’s because Harvey Kurtzman seldom blew his own horn, and
after he left the magazine, the publishers of Mad omitted his name from
reprints in those best-selling paperback books. In 1988, most of the stu-
dents in Kurtzman’s “Satirical Cartooning” class at New York’s School of
the Visual Arts didn’t know that their soft-spoken instructor was a giant
of American humor. At least, not until Art Spiegelman guest-lectured the
class one day.
Harvey Kurtzman (1987): courtesy of Ben Asen Photography.
