Art For Art’s Sake #63: It’s Melvin

The wonder of comic art, brought to you week in and week out by us here at Comicon – it’s Art For Art’s Sake…
This one I love. Back in 1969, the great Charles Schulz did a great Peanuts strip which had Snoopy composing his novel…

And then, 12 years on in 1981, Len Wein and Walter Simonson gave us this from Detective Comics #500. This is one of my favourite homages ever…

 
Marco D’Alfonso – Spidey in a Peanuts style…

Ben Templesmith – Poison Ivy

Stephanie Hans – a warm-up The Wicked & The Divine

Star Trek – Jim Steranko

Cliff Robinson – Superhero Poker…

Simon Bisley – Cover to Swamp Thing…

Tank Girl – Angel Laveaux

Ted McKeever – the magnificent Eddy Current

TMNT – James Jean

And more TMNT – Michaelangelo by Chris Stevens

Tess Fowler – Red Sonja

Andrew MacLean – Avengers…

The FF – Kris Anka

And to end…
Harvey Kurtzman was a genius. It’s as simple as that.
Terry Gilliam has called Harvey Kurtzman a God in the past. I reckon Gilliam undersold him.
I can’t actually remember when I first became aware of Kurtzman the artist, I don’t think it would have been when I was looking at dad’s Mad magazines in his study, so it was probably either when Kitchen Sink did their reprints or when The Comics Journal told me all about him. But since then I’ve made a point of picking up whatever work I can find by the man, collecting together a library of various editions of his wonderful books, most of which are in absolutely terrible condition.
A few years ago, Dark Horse started doing an Essential Kurtzman library, so if you can track those down… do. But frankly, anything Kurtzman put his hand to is rather stunningly good.
And for a complete bio – go to Lambiek.
So… the incomparable Harvey Kurtzmann…

The genius of Hey Look – truly playing with the form…






Roughs for an Esquire piece…


His EC work…





The absolute classic – ‘Corpse On The Imjin’ from Two Fisted Tales (Feb 1952)

The Grasshopper & The Ant…


Potshot Pete…

And, of course, MAD…