Daily Breakdowns 017 - Bah Humbug

"The Beatles were overrated. The Rolling Stones, too."

--Keith Richard

Humbug
By Harvey Kurtzman, Al Jaffee, Jack Davis,Will Elder, Arnold Roth, Russ Heath, Larry Siegel and R.O. Blechman
Published by Fantagraphics Books. $60.00 USD

I just looked it up and see this slipcased, two-volume collection came out a little over a year ago. I bought it back then, and it's just now I'm giving up on it and moving on with my life.

Comic critics may have it pretty good now, as comics and graphic novels are getting a bit more respect, and there are more good ones these days, but for a long time we have been expected to worship a lot of old comics and famous creators that just don't hold up that well. Jack Kirby didn't end on a high note. Many of Will Eisner's graphic novels are not only not really graphic novels but they're trite and vaudevillian. We've lived long enough that Frank Miller embarrasses Jim Lee with his effort.

I was really excited to buy Humbug. I liked Kurtzman's work on Mad as a kid, in reprints, as well as more recent readings of his stories in Two-Fisted Tales. Add other Mad talents like Al Jaffee (I had just about every Signet paperback of his in the '80s), Will Elder, Jack Davis, as well as Arnold Roth and Russ Heath, as well as what I knew of the magazine being funded by Hugh Hefner and allowing Kurtzman & Co a great deal of creative freedom and a healthy budget, and I figured this lush package couldn't go wrong.

And it is a beautiful object, the way the spines of both volumes fit together to spell Humbug, the amusing caricatures on the slipcase, the new covers from Jaffee and Ross. I greatly enjoyed Gary Groth's interview with Roth and Jaffee. Because of the countless laughs he's given me, I have a real fondness for Jaffee and was pleased to see him treated with such respect and kindness, especially as he's an artist who doesn't get mentioned a lot in the comics world these days, and yet his cover indicates he's still got his skill.

The problem with the collection is that it's not $60 worth of funny. It's not very funny at all. As an historical object, sure, great. I think it should be in print. Kurtzman was a very important figure in comics, and the art and design of the pieces here are of an exceedingly high quality. I'm glad I can see more examples of Jaffee's, Elder's and Davis' work. But humor is not only a subjective thing, it can also be a very timely thing. In these pieces, written in large part by Kurtzman with Jaffee and Roth usually writing their own pieces, it's not enough that you remember singer Perry Como--you have to remember when he was young and known as a slouchy mumbler, an affront to the more polished type of crooner like Bing Crosby. Although it's admirable that the creators spoofed not only movies, TV and advertisements but other magazines, parenting books, and really, just about anything that was happening in the late '50s, in too many cases these subjects are mined for superficial comedy rather than any real need for satire. The supposed invincibility of boxer Floyd Patterson gets a page of very thin satire. O'Henry's "The Gift of the Magi" is retold with the only real joke being that for some reason characters from Guys & Dolls show up. There's a feeling that the goal here is to put a funny spin on everything going on in the world at that time, which may be why a lot of this falls flat or doesn't translate well. Some of the most successful of the Kurtzman era Mad pieces were either timeless gags or at least spoofs of things that had already showed some staying power and iconic value, like "Superduperman" or "Starchie." It's not that To Tell the Truth wasn't established enough for Kurtzman to conceivably get some big laughs for generations to come, but that he doesn't turn in a very good script, relying too much on goofy names like "Latismus Halflex" that no amount of Will Elder background overkill can save. The focus in these parodies s almost always on the surface details--the style and character traits, rather than the human comedy. Kurtzman's understanding of man's folly, as shown so well in work like Two-Fisted Tales, is largely absent here, in favor of slight concepts like setting then-familiar television programs in the Old West. There's also an unwelcome returning feature where cliched movie formulas are trotted out that are still pretty accurate today, just not that amusing. It's not all dire: "Flyashi Gordonovitch" has some funny meta jokes (Dr. Zarkov "defected" to this Russian comic strip from "Flash Gordon" because Flyashi has a better personality--he's drawn better), but the ratio of yuks to boredom or grim nods is low. It's a pretty exhausting experience, like taking a history test while your grandfather tells you jokes.

Christopher Allen
September 6th, 2009