Saturday, June 06, 2009

What Hath Kurtzman Wrought?


MAD always used to make merciless fun of how bad it's numerous non-EC competitors were back in the 1950's comic book days. The thing is that while they may not have had that MAD magic touch, they weren't really that bad! I collected them for years because they were cheap and relatively easy to find. WHACK, FLIP, CRAZY, EH!, WILD, RIOT, FROM HERE TO INSANITY. Although missing Harvey's stylish, Jewish sense of humor, they still offered amusing stories (some by Stan Lee) with art by the likes of Dick Ayers, Joe Kubert, Joe Maneely, Bill Everett and even Jack Kirby! Seen here, in fact, is perhaps the weirdest (and that's saying a lot!) super-doer the King ever created--COMET FELDMEYER and his sidekick, Lovable!
If you've ever been intrigued by these rip-offs or if you ever loved MAD, you need to pick up the newest issue of Roy Thomas's ALTER EGO where fellow blogger Ger Apeldoorn (http://allthingsger.blogspot.com/) offers up a delightfully obsessive and highly illustrated look at the whole fershlugginer phenomenon. It's available now as a digital edition from TWOMORROWS website (the plus being lots of color illustrations and much less expensive) but the print edition is due to hit stores this next week!

1 comment:

  1. Thanks for the plug. Do you know doing all the illustrations ook almost as much time as wrting the article?

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