New Harvey Kurtzman Book – a Video Preview …and some Pot-Shot Pete Comic Book Scans

Some of Harvey Kurtzman's greatest comic book work were his Pot-Shot Pete stories, which he created just prior to starting MAD for EC Comics. The Asifa-Hollywood Animation Archive has just posted some really amazing scans from the color original comic books, courtesy of the amazing collection belonging to Kent Butterworth. There's also a couple of Kurtzman's Pig Tales comics from the 1940's...about twenty pages of classic cartooning in all!
You can find all the comic book scans at: http://www.animationarchive.org/2009/06/comics-kurtzmans-comic-books.html

Also… BIG NEWS for Harvey Kurtzman fans! The long-awaited illustrated biography of Harvey Kurtzman is finally in bookstores!

What a treasure! I first got turned on to Kurtzman around 1986, when "Harvey Kurtzman’s Jungle Book" was reprinted. When his "Hey Look" collection (of pre-MAD one-page gag comics) came out, it instantly became my favorite book in the world, and my constant cartooning inspiration. It has never left the number one spot on my "Greatest Books Ever" list.

Want to look through the Art of Harvey Kurtzman book before you run out and buy it? I just made a video showing my clumsy hands pawing through the whole thing! Take a look at all the rare art and wonderful cartoony delights in the video below...

Once the video starts to play, press the little HQ button
to see it in the best resolution!
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For more info and reviews check here:

The Art of Harvey Kurtzman

Harvey Kurtzman's "Hey Look" Appreciation over at John K's Blog

 

There's some great analysis about Harvey Kurtzman's Hey Look pages at John K's blog today. I could start a huge loving rant about Kurtzman, but instead, I'll just beg you to go over to John's place and read what he has to say.

 

Suffice to say that it was reading Harvey Kurtzman's Jungle Book hardcover back in 1986 that got me back into drawing after a nasty period of burn-out. Kurtzman got me excited about funny comics at a time when there wasn't much to get excited about.  I found out about his brilliant Hey Look comics later that year when I found a beat-up copy of Kurtzman Comics at Hi-De-Ho comics in Santa Monica. That little 32-page underground comic included Pot-Shot Pete and a variety of Hey Look pages.

 

A few years later, Denis Kitchen put out the complete collection of Hey Look and Pot-Shot Pete in the now-hard-to-find Hey Look hardcover and paperback. Since it's long out of print, that book's quite expensive these days, but if you're a cartoonist, it's literally worth ten times what they're asking. There's a link to used copies at John's post.

...and for those of you that have never seen these pages, there are a few nice Hey Look scans at John's post, too!

ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive: Comics: Kurtzman's Comic Books

ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive: Comics: Kurtzman's Comic Books

THANKS to Steve Worth and the ASIFA-Hollywood and to Kent Butterworth for these amazing Harvey Kurtzman high-resolution scans! Judging from the art in the Hey Look book, these are probably from 1947 when Kurtzman was just starting to burst into pure cartooning greatness. Cartoon art like this deserves to be looked at in hi-res! It's always a shame when someone takes the time to scan great lost treasures but neglects to set the scanner at a decent resolution. THANKS to Steve Worth and the ASIFA-Hollywood and to Kent Butterworth for these gifts!

PS...there are lots of great "Comic book reader" applications available on the web to make archiving and reading comic pages on your computer a more pleasant experience. I recommend "Comic Book Lover" for Mac, but there are many others if you google the term. It really helps you get more mileage out of these swell downloads.