Michael Sporn Animation – Splog

Bill Peckmann offers another collaboration between the two great cartoonist/illustrators, Jack Davis and Harvey Kurtzman. Over to Bill:

“Gary Cooper”, an affectionate handle that was given to Jack Davis by his fellow EC Comics staffers back in the early 1950′s. The nickname fit well not only because of good looking Jack’s lean and lanky frame but also because of his impeccable easy going, gentlemanly manners. I’d take it one step further and say that just like Mr. Cooper who gave credence to any genre role he played in the movies (contemporary, sports, westerns etc.), so did Jack by excelling in any genre (crime, horror, humor, war) he drew in comic books!

What better way to bring the two together than in Harvey Kurtzman‘s spoofs of two very popular western movies of their day. “High Noon” and “Vera Cruz”.

So, with the help of Mr. Kurtzman, Mr. Davis and Mr. Chickencooper, here is “Hah! Noon!” from MAD comic book No. 9, 1954.

The cover

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Here is “Vera’s Cruz” from the first MAD magazine, No.24, 1955. Both Harvey and Jack are in tip top form, (as always) in this, their first western movie spoof in the new black and white magazine format. (Funny,”Hah! Noon!” was the first caricatured movie send up that Kurtzman and Davis did together a year earlier in the comic book MAD.) In this new magazine format, our favorite funnymen duo were able to do a 10 pager compared to the usual 7 and 8 page stories they did in the comic book format, how they must have relished that!

The cover

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Many thanks, again, to Bill Peckmann for sharing his great collection with us.

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