BIOGRAPHY:

"Had he not existed, I'd be a dull, humorless lout working in a muffler shop somewhere, and so would practically everyone I know. I shudder to think how horrible the world would be today without that which Harvey Kurtzman begat!"
Dan Clowes

"Kurtzman has been the single most significant influence on a couple of generations of comic artists."
Art Spiegelman

"To most historians of pop culture Mr Kurtzman is one of the most important figures in postwar America"
New York Times Book Review

"He is 5 feet 6 inches tall and has a physique that is just barely noticeable and a long expression. In fact, Harvey looks like a beagle who is too polite to mention that someone is standing on his tail. This Beagleishness has certain compensations - he is never ordered off the grass in Central Park and Pretty Girls frequently stop on the street to scratch him behind the ears."
Roger Price, from his introduction to the MAD Reader

Harvey Kurtzman (1924-1993) was born in New York City, USA and was a cartoonist, writer, editor and comics genius. He is generally recognised as one of the most influential humourists of the twentieth century. He is probably best remembered for creating the ground-breaking satirical MAD, the historically accurate war comics Two-Fisted Tales and Front Line Combat, as well as the Little Annie Fanny strip which appeared intermittently in Playboy magazine for 26 years.

In the 1970s he became known as the "father-in-law of underground comix" for inspiring a new generation of media-bending cartoonists. Between 1973 and 1990, until health forced his retirement, he shared is wisdom and experience with the students at New York's School of Visual Arts. Each year he published Kar-Tunz, an anthology of student work which showcased many of today's top comic artists.

Such is the respect for Harvey Kurtzman and his contribution to the comic medium, that the comics industry's oldest and most respected awards, The Harvey's, are named in his honour.

Interviews:
Will Eisner's Shop Talk (2001)
The Comics Journal #153 (1992)
Wired For Sound (1985)
The Comics Journal #67 (1981)

Resources:
Will Elder.net
The Harvey Awards
Time.com: Appreciation
The Comics Journal #157: Obituary
The Comics Journal #179: Article

Will Elder: The Mad Playboy Of Art
Fantagraphics, 2003
All Kurtzman fans will want a copy of Will Elder: The Mad Playboy Of Art, which is the definitive career retrospective of Will Elder, Kurtzman's collaborator of over 30 years. It contains over a hundred pages of comics from long out of print magazines like Trump, Humbug, and Help as well as other collaborations with Kurtzman, together with examples of Elder's commercial illustration work, painting portraits and sketches.

The GrassHopper & The Ant
Denis Kitchen Publishing, 2001
A lost gem that originally appeared in Esquire magazine in 1960, The Grasshopper & The Ant is Kurtzman's schizophrenic beatnik take on an ancient fable and is one of his relatively few graphic stories that is 100% Kurtzman working without an artistic collaborator.

"Harvey Kurtzman, the inventor of MAD, was 90% workaholic ant and 10% pure Anarchist Grasshopper. The result was a 100% Cool Cat who composed comix with Duke Ellington's grace, Dizzy Gillespie's wit and Charlie Parker's originality. Dig it!"
Art Spiegelman

Harvey Kurtzman's Jungle Book
Kitchen Sink Press, 1986
"He is as good as any cartoonist in history that I know of. Some of his greatest stuff was done in a little Ballantine Book called Harvey Kurtzman's Jungle Book published around 1959. Kurtzman did all the drawing as well as the writing. I hope somebody will reprint it someday in its entirety on good paper, as I'd like to own a copy."
Robert Crumb

Two-Fisted Tales, Front Line Combat
EC Comics, 1950-1954
At EC Comics, Harvey Kurtzman produced what are probably the best war comics ever printed. In collaboration with artists like Wally Wood, Jack Davis, Will Elder and John Severin, he refused to romanticise war and he was a stickler for historical accuracy. As Kurtzman stated, "I didn't want to be a preacher, but I did want to tell the truth about things... I was absolutely appalled by the lies in the war books that publishers were putting out... This trash had nothing to do with the reality of life."

"...seeking perfection in a 10 cent comic book."
William Gaines, EC Publisher

"I'm really enjoying the complete Two Fisted Tales. It's a revelation. It makes me wonder where American comics went wrong... It was only after looking at the layouts in there that I realised what storytelling was about."
Mike McMahon

"Kurtzman's war stories... are superb pieces of storytelling and art. 40 years has not dimmed their resonant, haunting drama and their dynamic, often jarring graphic impact."
The Comics Journal #153

MAD
EC Comics, 1952-1956
"The first time I encountered Harvey Kurtzman, I was around ten years old. The encounter took place between the covers of The Bedside MAD, a paperback collection; strange, American, the cover painting possibly by Kelly Freas, the edges of the pages dyed a bright, almost fluorescent yellow. To this day, it burns inside my head. The stories in that volume and the Kurtzman stories I discovered later brandised satire like a monkey-wrench: a wrench to throw against pop-culture's gears or else employed to wrench our perceptions just a quarter-twist towards the left, no icon left unturned."
Alan Moore, The Comics Journal #157

Little Annie Fanny Vol 1&2
Dark Horse, 2000
The most lavish and most expensive comic strip ever produced. With Little Annie Fanny, Harvey Kurtzman, together with longtime collaborator, Will Elder, created a Playboy icon second only to the Rabbit Head logo. This risqué comic was stunningly rendered in full colour and took an irreverent look at the changing face of America. Satire, political commentary, sexy humour and artistic innovation all wrapped up in the perkiest package imaginable - Little Annie Fanny.

"Some of the farthest-out, most beautifully executed episodes of the zaniest, lushest, most unique cartoon feature ever conceived."
Hugh Hefner

Kurtzman Books:
Will Elder: The Mad Playboy Of Art (2003)
The Mad Archives Vol 1 (2002)
The GrassHopper & The Ant (2001)
Little Annie Fanny Vol 2 (2001) with Will Elder
Little Annie Fanny Vol 1 (2000) with Will Elder
Hey Look! (1992)
From Aargh! To Zap!: A Visual History Of Comics (1991)
Harvey Kurtzman's Strange Adventures (1990)
My Life As A Cartoonist (1988)
Flash Gordon (1988) with Dan Barry
Betsy's Buddies (1988) with Sarah Downs
The Jungle Book (1986)
Goodman Beaver (1984) with Will Elder

Kurtzman Comics & Magazines:
The New Two-Fisted Tales #1-2 (1993-1994)
Little Annie Fanny in Playboy (1962-1988)
Help #1-26 (1960-1965)
Harvey Kurtzman's The Jungle Book (1959)
Humbug #1-11 (1957-1958)
Trump #1-2 (1957)
Two-Fisted Tales #18-35 (1950-1953)
Front Line Combat #1-15 (1951-1954)
MAD #1-28 (1952-1956)
Flash Gordon (1951-1953)
Hey Look! (1946-1949)

Short Stories:
Goodman Goes Playboy in The Comics Journal #262 (2004)
It Burns Me Up in The Ray Bradbury Chronicles (1993)