Number 2402: Humbug and Mad: variations on a theme

I was 10 years old in 1957, and aware of the buzz on the movie, Baby Doll, from a play by Tennessee Williams. I thought the images of actress Carroll Baker sucking her thumb were odd, but not only was I only 10, I was completely naïve about sex and sexual symbolism. Baby Doll was controversial because of its sexual theme. But all of it went over my head.

That summer I bought Humbug #1 at a local pharmacy. Later in the summer I bought Mad #35. Both of them took off on the image of Carroll Baker. Humbug did a more traditional satire, probably written by editor Harvey Kurtzman, and Mad did a 4-page mash-up of Williams’s plays, Baby Doll, A Streetcar Named Desire, and The Rose Tattoo, drawn by Wallace Wood. Despite my innocence, I “got” the Humbug satire, but was puzzled by Mad. That was because at the time I knew more about Tennessee Ernie Ford* than Tennessee Williams.

When looking at Humbug and its bad printing, it did not match Mad, but I recognized the names Harvey Kurtzman and Jack Davis from the Mad Reader paperback. (And Humbug cost 10¢ less than Mad; important for a kid with a small allowance.) I knew more about Mad than I did sex. Not impossible, because I knew nothing about sex except I liked looking at pictures of actresses like Carroll Baker, Marilyn Monroe, and especially the incredible Brigitte Bardot . . . sigh. Oops, I’m going off into a reverie. Sorry about that.

The Humbug scans come from my copy of Humbug #1, and the Mad scans come from the CD set, Totally Mad.

*From YouTube, Tennessee Ernie’s biggest hit, “16 Tons”.

Number 440


This is your wife


Last week I showed you some teenage comics with cute chicks...this week a comic with grownup cute chicks. Crazy #2 from 1954 is one of the better Mad imitators of the era.

I love the Al Hartley artwork on the first story, a take-off on the old This Is Your Life TV program, a mainstay of '50s television. Ed Winiarsky does a credible job on "High Moon," although anyone who remembers the Harvey Kurtzman/Jack Davis "Hah! Noon!" from Mad will find it lacking. Still, it has some pulchritude, and that's what we're looking at today.

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So, yeah...tomorrow is Christmas. Keeping up with the satirical vein of today's post, talk about your ghost of Christmas past! Here's "A Christmas Carol," done by Arnold Roth for Humbug #6, posted in Pappy's #59, 2006. I understand the two volume set of Humbug reprints won't be available for at least a couple more months, so this will give you a preview. I recently re-did the scans. Enjoy, and have a great Christmas Eve.

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.

"You Are There" was 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. 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.

Number 79


Harvey Kurtzman and Will Elder present Elvis Presley in Jailbreak Rock!



Hey, happy birthday, Elvis. A day late, but happy birthday anyway.

Had Elvis lived he'd be 71. Wow. Who could imagine a gyrating, hip-swinging Elvis of 71? It'd be like Mick Jagger still rocking in his sixties, dancing around on stage. Whoops. Mick Jagger is still rocking in his sixties, so maybe if Elvis had lived past 40 he'd still be going, still throwing his weight around (ouch...that was mean) in Las Vegas.

In 1958 rock 'n' roll was still a mostly new phenomenon, although Elvis had been around for a couple of years and made his presence well known everywhere. Humbug, the little humor magazine owned by an artists cooperative consisting of Harvey Kurtzman, Jack Davis, Will Elder, Al Jaffee, Arnold Roth, et al., didn't miss a beat when it came to depicting Elvis. Jailhouse Rock was a huge hit, both as a song and as a movie, and this parody, short and succinct, captures both the look and feel of the movie and of Elvis' popularity.

Will Elder's artwork is great, even though it's hampered by the horrible printing Charlton Press did on Humbug. You can still see enough of it to see that a few years before Little Annie Fanny, he was still as great as he was in Mad. Every panel is as funny as anything he did for Mad, and as packed with gags as anything he ever drew. Check out the splash panel and the Teamsters band! Also check out the next to last panel of the story. The "band" consists of Jimmie Dodd and the Mouseketeers, Elvis has a copy of Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler on his U.S. Army blanket, along with a copy of his draft notice. Pretty good for one small panel, and the whole story is like that!

The story is obviously written by Harvey Kurtzman. He didn't sign it but his signature style is all over it.

So, Elvis, wherever you are, hope you had a hunk-a, hunk-a birthday cake.

Number 59



A Humbug Christmas Carol


Ho! Ho! Ho! Only five weeks until Christmas, boys and girls! Have you got your online shopping done yet? It can be exhausting going to website after website, typing in your credit card number, can't it?

Just think of those poor folks out in the stores trying to elbow each other for the last of this year's fad toys, the ones your kids have just gotta have, the ones they'll have broken or discarded before Christmas brunch. Remember, those desperate shoppers all have tired feet from walking the shopping malls, you have tired fingers from keyboarding.

So while taking the occasional break from your online shopping, check with me. For the next five weeks I'll be presenting a different Christmas offering every Sunday until Christmas Eve. First up, a really off-the-wall retelling of an old Christmas chestnut, "A Christmas Carol."

Harvey Kurtzman and his friends started Humbug magazine when their other venture, Trump, was killed by publisher Hugh Hefner after two issues. Humbug was a great magazine, killed by low sales and spotty distribution. It was printed and distributed by Charlton Comics in the same size as comic books. It was priced a nickel more than comic books, and printed in a duotone format. It was also the sort of adult humor that Kurtzman had tried originally with the magazine issues of Mad he had edited. Because of Humbug's size it was most often put with the comic books on a spinner rack, where adult readers weren't likely to find it.

"A Christmas Carol" was published in Humbug #6, January 1958. It was drawn by Arnold Roth, whose work always reminded me of the British Punch magazine cartoonists. A perfect cartoonist to reinterpret Charles Dickens. No writing credit is given, so I'm guessing Kurtzman, who had a way of finding the core silliness of any subject he was lampooning. Nothing was safe from him, not even a maudlin but beloved Christmas story like "A Christmas Carol."

Jack Davis autographed my copy at the 1985 San Diego Comicon.

.…and anyone who doesn't find this story funny will be boiled in his own plum pudding and buried with a sprig of holly through his heart.