HEY! KIDS! COMICS! : Kurtzman, Kelly, Wolverton, Brown, Jane and much more : September 24th, 2008

STWALLSKULL'S HEY! KIDS! COMICS! TODAY’S FEATURED ITEMS:

Another heap of fun comics reading…

I’m happy to report a lot of blogs seem to be having a Harvey Kurtzman binge right now… I’m rereading Kurtzman’s Jungle Book right now, myself. Kurtzman’s notoriety comes primarily from being the inventor of Mad Magazine, and he is usually very funny. Although he worked with a lot of other artists, writing for their drawings (most notably Will Elder), I like Kurtzman best when he is drawing himself. He is one of the most expressive cartoonists of all time…

Those Fabuleous Fifties brings us some rare Kurtzman strips from Madison Avenue Magazine

And some from Esquire

Comicrazys brings us a Kurtzman pre-Mad funny animal comic called Pigtales from 1946…

And John K gives us a nice appreciation of Kurtzman…

John Adcock at Yesterday’s Papers brings us a number of examples of the notoriously racy WWII comic strip Jane by Norman Pett… Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.

The official Pogo Possum website is serializing the Pogo paperback Go Fizzickle Pogo

Potrzebie points us to Basil Wolverton art galore his days working at the religious magazine The Plain Trutha huge archive of many of Plain Truth founder Herbert W. Armstrong’s numerous publications online, which are often fantastically illustrated by Wolverton. Among many other publications, the archive includes most or all issues of the Plain Truth, where Wolverton’s amazing Bible Story was originally serialized… the versions in the magazine (and in alternate publishings of the book versions of The Bible Story) contain different material, so I imagine there is a whole lot of stuff in here that was never reprinted in book form. It is a lot of crap to wade through, but there is a real treasure trove here. The below image was pulled from a random one of the hundreds of issues on the site.

Last but far from least, Walrus Magazine points us to a new Chester Brown tale from the Yummy Fur universe called Zombies Take Toronto… the image quality sucks, but it is a great read.

Note that the esteemed Mr. Brown is currently running for office, which, regardless of what you think of his politics, is a tragic waste of his enormous cartooning talents. The early issues of Yummy Fur (the recently reprinted in pamphlet form Ed the Happy Clown saga… which hopefully will soon be a book, considering some previous book versions of it are going for over 200 bucks on Amazon) are some of the most wonderfully surreal and creepy comics ever made.

Note also that the final installment of the Zombies strip also reveals that there is a Yummy Fur movie in the works to be directed by Bruce MacDonald… hopefully this means Mr. Brown will be deeply involved in its translation to the screen. Adapting Yummy Fur to the screen and getting distribution should be quite challenging, I imagine… it will, of course, have to be xxx to be a good adaptation, considering all the miserable penises with starring roles in the comic.

A lot more great stuff below…