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| The two-book Humbug (ISBN 978-1560979333) and Trump (ISBN 978-1506701028) reprints. |
Well worth the wait! At last a super-looking book about the comics funny man. There are several books about Mad, a Humbug (2009) and Trump (2016) reprint to reveal how great Kurtzman was and this book is a handsome biography not only in words but with two hundred well-chosen illustrations.
His story, by Kitchen and Buhle, is helped because they represent the Kurtzman estate and clearly had access to a lot of original artwork which I doubt has been seen before. You'll see art from Two-fisted Tales, Frontline Combat, Mad, Trump, Humbug, Help! and Playboy's Little Annie Fanny all with decent captions, too.
The book's production is really first-class and a nice touch is the addition of four pages printed on tracing paper that overlay a page of Little Annie Fanny, the long captions explain just how much work went into each page of the Playboy feature.
Since his death in 1993 Kurtzman's stature has grown and rightly so but I thought it unfortunate that he never quite achieved the perfection he was always striving for with his publications. I bet he would have appreciated the love and care that has gone into this book tribute.
I originally wrote this review for Amazon in 2009.
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