October 3: Harvey Kurtzman

Harvey Kurtzman, the key creative force behind MAD magazine and one of the greatest satirists in American history, was born in Brooklyn on this date in 1924. Kurtzman founded MAD in 1952 with William Gaines’ EC Comics as publisher. They expanded it into a magazine in 1955, which freed Mad from the censorship of the Comics Code and led to the creation of Alfred E. (“What me worry?”) Neuman, MAD’s cover boy. Among the classic characters of popular culture that Kurtzman skewered (with a generous sprinkling of Yiddishisms) during his short tenure were Tarzan (“Melvin of the Apes”), Flash Gordon (“Flesh Garden”), Frankenstein (“Frank N. Stein”), Superman (“Superduperman”), and dozens more. The New York Times called Kurtzman “one of the most important figures in post-war America” while Time magazine observed that “Mad was the first comic enterprise that got its effects almost entirely from parodying other kinds of popular entertainment . . . Almost all American satire today follows a formula that Harvey Kurtzman thought up.” After he left Mad (over money issues), he produced “Little Annie Fannie” cartoons in Playboy magazine, which added a certain level of self-parody to Hugh Hefner’s enterprise — but nothing in Kurtzman’s output as either a writer or cartoonist before his death at age 68 began to approach the hilarity of his Mad parodies.

“Kurtzman’s fundamental conviction was that cartoons should use satire to cut through fantasies rather than promote them. During his apex years . . . he was a powerhouse who used both his words and pictures to show a world in which the search for goodness and truth was met by nothing but liars, hustlers, bullies and fools. . . . No one was safe, no storytelling conventions were sacred.” —Milo Miles

Watch a video profile, “The Art of Harvey Kurtzman,” featuring interviews with Al Jaffee and Robert Grossman. Music by Nik Turner’s Fantastic All Stars