1950s MAD wannabes 2 2

[OtherEric]

#19 features Woody Allen in the Fumetti story.

[OtherEric]

End of the run.  #22 has the first appearance of Fritz the Cat by Robert Crumb, #24 features John Cleese in the Fumetti.  It was while working on the story that he met Terry Gilliam, who was the assistant editor at the time.  Gilliam is also one of the actors in the hoods on the #26.

[Robot Man]

11 hours ago, Electricmastro said:

Wish I knew who drew this cover:

I have no idea. But one of my favorite MAD imitator covers!

[Robot Man]

11 hours ago, OtherEric said:

End of the run.  #22 has the first appearance of Fritz the Cat by Robert Crumb, #24 features John Cleese in the Fumetti.  It was while working on the story that he met Terry Gilliam, who was the assistant editor at the time.  Gilliam is also one of the actors in the hoods on the #26.

Thanks for posting this run. I have never really liked it as a whole mostly because it was too photo heavy. I have a spotty collection of them just picking them up when I run into them. 

I don’t consider it a top effort by Kurtzman. Especially when you consider Trump, Humbug and of course the original MAD. But it has it’s place in history. 

[Robot Man]

I do enjoy all the other MAD imitators. Many have a lot of the MAD and Atlas artists. Some are hit and miss. 

They seem to fall into two categories. The comic book ones that imitate the comic book and the magazine ones that imitate the magazine. 

Most of the first issues of the magazines seemed to start around 1958 which is when MAD’s circulation was way up. 

The magazines are rare as hen’s teeth as a rule. Much more so than the comic books which far more were printed. You can forget high grade with these. I have been fortunate to run into a couple of collections or I probably wouldn’t have many. 

[50YrsCollctngCmcs]

@OtherEric thanks for posting the Help run; it's kind of amazing to think of the pop culture spin offs that grew out of that run from the underground comics scene, to Monty Python and I even caught Gahan Wilson's name on the cover. I only have the bone white cover issue of Help. shown below; you rarely see these for sale so it's great you put together a run. As a kid I had a paperback that must have been reprinted from Help as it was black and white photos with word caption balloons. It was mainly about Kennedy, Kruschev and Fidel Castro. It was pretty beat up and well read so I let it go at some point.

[50YrsCollctngCmcs]

13 hours ago, OtherEric said:

That last cover is my favorite!!

[OtherEric]

2 hours ago, Robot Man said:

Thanks for posting this run. I have never really liked it as a whole mostly because it was too photo heavy. I have a spotty collection of them just picking them up when I run into them. 

I don’t consider it a top effort by Kurtzman. Especially when you consider Trump, Humbug and of course the original MAD. But it has it’s place in history. 

Help! is very much a mixed bag, to be sure.  For a lot of its run, it was way too much content a month for Kurtzman to do his best work.  Around issue #11, when it went to the less frequent schedule, the quality improved.  I think the last 5 issues, with the lower page count but on a regular schedule, really are quite good.  It's a much more focused and funny book, with a lot of work by Crumb and Shelton and other underground cartoonists, shortly before the undergrounds really became a thing.

[OtherEric]

4 minutes ago, 50YrsCollctngCmcs said:

@OtherEric thanks for posting the Help run; it's kind of amazing to think of the pop culture spin offs that grew out of that run from the underground comics scene, to Monty Python and I even caught Gahan Wilson's name on the cover. I only have the bone white cover issue of Help. shown below; you rarely see these for sale so it's great you put together a run. As a kid I had a paperback that must have been reprinted from Help as it was black and white photos with word caption balloons. It was mainly about Kennedy, Kruschev and Fidel Castro. It was pretty beat up and well read so I let it go at some point.

You're welcome.  I think Help! is, in many ways, a vital book in the history of pop culture, as you mentioned.  At a bare minimum, it draws the line directly from MAD to Monty Python and Underground Comix and from there to tons of other stuff. It's also important as an early Warren magazine.

The catch is, it never really had a classic of its own.  The closest it got was the Goodman Beaver stories.  It's not always an easy book to read, and the page count is often horribly padded making it harder to find the good stuff.

As I hinted earlier, I think the reason that particular issue is so hard to track down (and it's one of the last ones I found for my set) is because Woody Allen is in the Fumetti story, and his fans have a lot of the copies.  It also came out at a point where the schedule on the book was extremely irregular, so distribution could have been spotty.