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Harvey Kurtzman was an American cartoonist and editor of comic books and magazines. His large body of work include writing and editing the parodic comic book Mad from 1952 until 1956, and the sexy and satirical Little Annie Fanny strips in Playboy from 1962 until 1988. His work is noted for its satire and parody of popular culture, social critique, and an obsessive attention to detail. His working method has been likened to that of an auteur, and those who illustrated his stories were expected to follow his layouts strictly.
Born to Jewish immigrants, Kurtzman took early to cartooning. After graduating from New York's High School of Music & Art, he spent the 1940s doing freelance work for various publishers and publications before getting regular work at EC Comics in 1950 writing and drawing for their New Trend line of comic books. He wrote and edited the Two-Fisted Tales and Frontline Combat war comic books, where he also drew many of the carefully researched stories, before he created his most-remembered comic book, Mad, in 1952. The Kurtzman-scripted stories were drawn by top EC cartoonists, most frequently Will Elder, Wally Wood, and Jack Davis; the early Mad was noted for its social critique and parodies of pop culture. The comic book switched to a magazine format in 1955, and Kurtzman left it in 1956 over a dispute with EC's owner William Gaines over financial control. Following his departure, he did a variety of cartooning jobs, including editing the short-lived Trump and the self-published Humbug. In 1959, he produced the first book-length work of original comics, the adult-oriented, satirical Jungle Book. He edited the low-budget Help! from 1960 to 1965, a humor magazine which featured work by future Monty Python member Terry Gilliam and the earliest work of underground cartoonists such as Robert Crumb and Gilbert Shelton. He brought Help! to an end after the success of the risqué Playboy feature Little Annie Fanny began to take up too much of his time. While Annie Fanny provided much of his income for the rest of his career, he continued to produce an eclectic body of work, including screenwriting the animated Mad Monster Party in 1967 and directing, writing and designing several shorts for Sesame Street in 1969.
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