Bill Peckmann &Comic Art &Illustration 28 Oct 2011 05:47 am
Harvey and Jack – Part 4
- The series we’ve been posting of the collabortion between Harvey Kurtzman and Jack Davis seems to be a popular item. This gives us lots of encouragement to go on with it. Hence, here’s part 4. These were scanned and sent to me for posting by the brilliant Bill Peckmann. From here on I turn it all over to Bill:
- This extended part 4 of Harvey and Jack is a big shout out thank you to Tom Hatchman. After his kind kudos to Kurtzman and Davis, (and it also being the end of the baseball season with the World Series), what better way than to try to add to that list of “firsts” of that dynamic duo than with Jack’s first cover for MAD Comics. It’s a dandy! (It’s #2, Dec.-Jan. 1953, and was his only cover for the “comic book” line/title.)
1The cover story by Harvey and Jack is one of their best.
It’s worth studying because of Harvey’s layouts with their
exceptional continuity and his gorgeous page and panel designs.
The man always had a camera cranking in his head, unbelievable.
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2This is also one of the first baseball/sports stories that Jack
did for the comics. His drawings are just exploding with life,
their wonderful dimensional quality and his great dexterity of
where to put that black ink with that super brush of his.
This story also put him on that long road of becoming one of
the best “sports” cartoonists in the business!
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9Again, also what makes this story so pleasurable is
the terrific coloring by a young Marie Severin.
She was the colorist for the whole EC Comics line up,
no small feat, she always made the EC line stand out
from the rest of the comics on the rack. They absolutely
grabbed you first because of the covers she colored!
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10This is Jack’s first cover for MAD Magazine, # 27, April 1956.
(A little over three years since he did his first MAD Comic Book cover.)
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11Inside MAD # 27 we find two features by Harvey and Jack.
In “Football” jack pulls out all of the stops with his great eye
for caricaturing details like the football uniforms.
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16This is the second feature of the magazine and
Jack is becoming quite the master of two tones
of gray Craft Tint, Ã la Roy Crane.
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18This third feature of MAD # 27 is neither Harvey nor Jack but it’s
definitely worth sneaking in here. As a kid, I’ll always remember
and love Harvey for showing us great cartoons that were done
before he was doing great cartoons, way before! What dusty bins
and archives he went through, I have no idea, but the ones he
selected held up the some odd 50 years after they were originally
printed, and by George, they still hold up the some 50 years after that!
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19To any dog owner, the dog poses in here are top notch!
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on 28 Oct 2011 at 11:18 am 1.Paul Spector said …
Eye candy and reading candy. Thanks!
on 28 Oct 2011 at 2:32 pm 2.tom hachtman said …
great post to go with a game seven – harvey and jack – great any day – thanks
on 29 Oct 2011 at 5:25 am 3.Stephen Macquignon said …
I’m happy he was bit by the snake