Thursday, August 16, 2007

Mad About Kurtzman

Mike Lynch has scans up on his site of a long, 1977 New York Times article on Mad Magazine. It's an odd piece. In 1977, Mad's founding editor, Harvey Kurtzman, had been gone for 22 of Mad's 25 years and yet the article is mostly about Kurtzman. His successors — editor Al Feldstein and assistant editors Nick Meglin and Jerry DeFuccio — are depicted in a photo but barely covered in the article. Publisher William M. Gaines gets mentioned only as necessary to speak of Kurtzman's contribution.

The authors note how Mad's readership has swelled to (at that point) a peak of over two million per issue but leave you with the impression that the swelling is indicative of Kurtzman's influence. Might not Feldstein, on whose watch most of those readers came aboard, have had a little something to do with that? The big color illustration depicts Spy Vs. Spy, the work of Don Martin and Paul Coker, and a movie parody drawn by Mort Drucker. Those are all aspects of Mad that came to be after Kurtzman departed. For that matter, the famous grinning countenance of Alfred E., though it had its origins in the Kurtzman years, is basically a calling card for the Feldstein era.

There are also a few historical points that conflict with my understanding. Mention is made of Kurtzman's merry, original band of artists — Will Elder, Jack Davis and Wally Wood — but the name of the fourth, John Severin, is omitted. The phrasing also suggests that Elder assisted Kurtzman with the layouts of all the early Mad stories. That's something I never heard before and do not believe is true.

The article says that Kurtzman decided to create Mad because he had jaundice and wanted a project he could do without leaving his room — again, not quite the way I heard it, not even from Kurtzman. Obviously, Harvey was interviewed for the piece and at that moment, chose to tell it that way. The way he told it to me and others was that his paycheck was lagging sadly behind that of Al Feldstein, who was writer-editor of other comics for the same company. The discrepancy was there because Feldstein was editing a book a week, whereas Kurtzman output one issue of his two war comics per month. And as an aside here: A topic for further discussion is to what extent this was because Harvey was a thorough perfectionist who researched every line down to microscopic degree, and to what extent Harvey was just one of those artists who did things right the first time, then did them over and over and over out of pure neurotic fear. Several who worked with Kurtzman, including Wally Wood, felt the latter was more often the case.

In any event, the way the story is more commonly told is that Mad was invented because Kurtzman needed to raise his income. Gaines used to claim that he suggested Harvey cobble up an additional comic — a humor title because it wouldn't require the research that the war comics did. Kurtzman said that was his own idea, and maybe it was. But the point is that the impetus to create Mad was that Kurtzman needed a project he could do in less time than he was spending on Two-Fisted Tales and Frontline Combat.

The tale of how Mad went from a dime color comic to a slicker black-and-white magazine is also at odds with accepted history. They say the switch was made to escape the Comics Code. Everyone, including Kurtzman, said it was because Kurtzman wanted out of the comic book format and was entertaining a job offer from a slick magazine. While he and Gaines did worry that censorship of some kind might lay ahead, the accepted history is that Gaines moved Mad to magazine format to keep Kurtzman from leaving. It appears to just have been fortuitous timing that the Comics Code was instigated the same month that Mad moved out of its jurisdiction.

I'm dwelling on a 33-year-old newspaper article to make a point here. I've been studying Mad since I was a tot and even wrote a book about that institution a few years ago. I've always heard about and even witnessed a certain friction between "The Kurtzman Kult," as some have dubbed it, and the folks who've done Mad since Harvey departed. I think both versions of the publication have vast amounts of merit and none of this is intended to debate the worth or even the relative worth of any era.

But I've heard Feldstein and others on his behalf complain about the tendency to praise Kurtzman by slighting those who came after and here's a perfect example. Harvey deserves mega-applause for his brilliance. The comic book issues of Mad may be the finest sprint of creativity ever in comics, and they're probably the funniest. But when he left, another era began under that logo...the era of Mort Drucker and Don Martin and Sergio Whatzisname and Frank Jacobs and a lot of brilliant writers and artists. That was the era of Feldstein, with Meglin adding funny and DeFuccio helping keep the machine operating...to say nothing of the talents of John Putnam, Leonard Brenner and others, including Bill Gaines. The N.Y. Times piece is, of course, largely forgotten...but the sentiments expressed are still present in so much that is written about the world's most popular humor magazine. There must be a way to give Kurtzman his due without minimizing those who followed.

• Posted at 5:00 PM · LINK

Today's Bonus Video Link

Here's an embed of the video of that interview I mentioned from last night's Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Note the obvious edit right after they finish discussing the cloning of Dick Cheney...

• Posted at 9:37 AM · LINK

From the E-Mailbag...

I got a number of messages like this one from Andy Rose...

I'm not sure where Warren Stubli got his information (or if he was just trying to make a factless point about political correctness), but a draft would most certainly not include women...at least not at first. The list of potential draftees is drawn up by the Selective Service System, which still registers only men between the ages of 18 and 25. (They have a website with a pretty exhaustive explanation of deferments and what would happen in a draft lottery.)

Yeah, but no one pays any attention to those things now because we don't have a draft and they don't matter. If actual human beings were actually being plucked from their lives and sent over to risk those lives in war, there'd be a lot of discussion over whether those should be only male lives and the answer would almost certainly be "No." And I don't think this nation would be as tolerant as it once was of a selective service system that seemed to have all sorts of escape clauses for the wealthy and well-connected...especially if it seemed to be a necessity thanks to the efforts of George "absentee National Guard" Bush and Dick "I had other priorities" Cheney.

If we did reinstate the draft in this country, they'd have to deal with those issues. But it's not going to happen because no one wants a draft...not even the military, insofar as I can tell. What they want is more recruits and one way to make that come to pass is to eliminate things like soldiers having to buy their own body armor and equipment, and the shameful reports of them being denied proper medical care. As with too many past wars, we seem to spend money on all sorts of stupid things, including just plain losing zillions of it to God-knows-where...but we short-sheet the soldiers. It's sacrilege to not love the troops but okay to skimp on their equipment and medical care.

If Bush and Cheney want to build support for this war, it sure wouldn't hurt (or be that difficult) to make those outrages go away, and I don't know why this isn't done. These are smart men. They can figure out a way to improve the lot of our soldiers and drive Halliburton stock up another few points.

• Posted at 9:34 AM · LINK

Rodgers and Hart To Hart

If I've said it once here, I've said it a thousand times. The Reprise! Theater Group is an organization that stages musical revivals for short runs on shorter budgets. Four times per subscription season, they mount some semi-lavish production up at Freud Hall at UCLA with minimal sets and even more minimal rehearsal time. But there's always a maximum of talent and it makes up for an awful lot.

Case in point: Last night was opening night of a new production that'll be up there until August 26. It's On Your Toes, the 1936 show by Richard Rodgers, Larry Hart and George Abbott. The show isn't performed much these days and it's easy to see why. The book is outdated. In fact, it was probably outdated in 1936...a silly story about a Music Professor who'd rather be a dancer. He gets involved in an attempt to convince a Bolshoi-like ballet company from Russia to stage an American jazz ballet and at some point, he becomes a performer in the company and you really don't care about it or all the other people involved in it. You're just there to hear the songs by Rodgers and Hart which, in this case, aren't the kind of ones that made their reputation. Only one — "There's a Small Hotel" — was at all familar to theatergoers last night and it isn't even that great a tune.

So it sounds like I had a lousy time and I must admit that there were a few stretches in Act One when I did. But the show picked up and through sheer talent, the cast and director drove this one across the finish line. Doing so much with so little, they made it all work.

Let me mention some of those people. Dan Mojica directed and he figured out how to get laughs on some pretty thin material. Jeffry Denman starred as the Music Teacher and was positively electric, bringing a lot of Fred Astaire to the proceedings and getting laughs where none were written. Stefanie Powers played the rich lady who manages the ballet troupe and she seems to have aged about a week since she was The Girl From U.N.C.L.E. She had a nice star turn and handled her musical numbers quite well. (One joke was added to the script to reference her run as co-star of Hart to Hart.) Dan Butler played the Russian impresario and Beth Malone played the Music Teacher's love interest. Gerald Sternbach was the Musical Director, providing a lush sound, and Lee Martino devised the sensational choreography. The dancing, which was quite plentiful, went a long way to making up for the shortcomings of the storyline.

I think I'd recommend it to anyone but with the caution that you kind of need to forget about the plot and just enjoy the performances. Jason Alexander is now the Artistic Director for Reprise! because, I guess, he squandered all his Seinfeld money and needed a job. Anyway, during the post-show party, an audience member interrupted a conversation he was having with a group of us to tell him they loved the show but thought the story was boring. Jason smiled and said, "Yes, well, we couldn't do much about that." He's right. But it was fun seeing a talented crew rise above the material and entertain so much in spite of it.

• Posted at 2:04 AM · LINK

Daily Discussion

You probably caught The Daily Show last evening but if you didn't, I'd like to recommend Jon Stewart's interview with Stephen F. Hayes, author of a new book on Dick Cheney. There's something very refreshing about some of Stewart's conversations, especially with people he disagrees with. Obviously, he dominates. It's his show, his studio audience. He controls the editing. (It looks to me like they sometimes let an interview run a little long, or at least until it reaches a good end point, and then go back in and chop something out to get it down to time. There was at least one big jump cut in the Hayes interview.)

But what impresses me is that Stewart tries to engage people in a real discussion. I don't think anyone can come on his show and give stock, pre-scripted answers. He doesn't ask them the obvious questions...which means they have to listen, they have to answer and they probably have to think a little before they answer. A good coach could prep you for an appearance with Larry King or Tim Russert or even Bill O'Reilly but I don't think they could rehearse what you'd be saying opposite Stewart.

His discussion with Hayes was fascinating and I'd recommend it to anyone who still supports the war and doesn't "get" one of several big reasons why people are so mad about it. Basically, Stewart referred to the video clip making the rounds — this one, of Cheney in 1994 saying that the U.S. should not invade Iraq because it would be a quagmire — and asked Hayes why the later Cheney didn't acknowledge what the '94 Cheney knew. It's a good question and Hayes had no real answer.

I'll post a link to a video of the interview if and when one is available somewhere.

• Posted at 1:03 AM · LINK

Roger's Back!

Roger Ebert is writing again and his topic is one of our favorite movies, Ace in the Hole. If you haven't ordered it, here's an Amazon link.

• Posted at 12:10 AM · LINK