Humbug (2 Volume Set) Review

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Humbug (2 Volume Set) ReviewA tip of the hat to Fantagraphics for this sumptuous two volume Humbug package. The complete eleven issues (well, not quite: sixteen pages are missing but I'll get to that shortly) of Kurtzman's third attempt at a humor magazine. By all accounts though, it seemed a bit of a non-starter. It was the wrong size, wrong price, wrong pagination and printed on the wrong paper despite a cracking editorial team. All of this is put right with this reprint which is on a decent bit of stock so the art really sparkles. Incidentally both books have a four page section at the back detailing the problems of reproducing the original art.
Book one has an eight page introduction to the magazine and at the back a thirty-four page interview with Al Jaffee and Arnold Roth. Both features give a lot of background to Kurtzman, the artists and the business decisions surrounding Mad, Trump, Humbug and Help! Everyone seems to agree that with Humbug Kurtzman reached his peak and I would agree with this. There are some seriously funny features in just eleven issues and don't forget the great artists: Jack Davis, Will Elder, Jaffee and Roth. Fans of Jack Davis (especially me) are in for a treat because there's tons of it including some wonderful two panel pages with a `Scenes we'd like to see' kind of feature.
Like Mad and Trump there are some great ad parodies and like the color covers they are printed on a slightly better paper. Another neat idea are the ten pages at the back of book two called Annotations where ads and features are explained to those who weren't around to buy Humbug on the newsstand.
The missing sixteen pages? By issue ten it was clear that the magazine was going nowhere financially so the size, price and pagination were upped for issue eleven, a quick decision it seems because to fill out the pages from the normal thirty-two to forty-eight (not including the covers) sixteen pages of the failed Trump were included. The copyright for these are owned by Playboy and there is a reprint of the two issues to be published so it would sort of spoil things to have them included in this Humbug reprint (and no doubt the copyright fees were the deciding factor).
Kurtzman fans will love these two books (in their handsome slipcase) and it only remains for a reprint of Help! to more or less complete and celebrate an American original funnyman. Don't forget to check out: The Art of Harvey Kurtzman: The Mad Genius of Comics, the definitive coffee table book about the great man.
***SEE SOME INSIDE PAGES by clicking 'see customer images' under the cover.

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