hkz 01 jungle book
hkz 01 jungle book
Ballantine Books 140 pages 1959
Harvey Kurtzman’s Jungle Book is a graphic novel by American cartoonist Harvey Kurtzman, published in 1959. Kurtzman aimed it at an adult audience, in contrast to his earlier work for adolescents in periodicals such as Mad. The social satire in the book’s four stories targets Peter Gunn-style private-detective shows, Westerns such as Gunsmoke, capitalist avarice in the publishing industry, Freudian pop psychology, and lynch-hungry yokels in the South. Kurtzman’s character Goodman Beaver makes his first appearance in one of the stories.
Kurtzman created the satirical Mad in 1952, but left its publisher EC Comics in 1956 after a dispute over financial control. After two failed attempts with similar publications, Kurtzman proposed Jungle Book as an all-original cartoon book to Ballantine Books to replace its successful series of Mad collections, which had moved to another publisher. Ballantine accepted Kurtzman’s proposal, albeit with reservations about its commercial viability. It was the first mass-market paperback of original comics published in the United States. Though it was not a financial success, Jungle Book attracted fans and critics for its brushwork, satirical adult-oriented humor, experimental dialogue balloons, and adventurous page and panel designs.
“Thelonius Violence, Like Private Eye”
Thelonius Violence speaks in jazz slang while surrounded by beautiful women and jazz background music, which was a parody of the jazz-choreographed fight scenes in the Peter Gunn television series.Violence’s job is to protect a young, vapid woman named Lolita Nabokov who is being blackmailed over her exam cheating. Violence suffers the onslaughts of a thug who attempts to keep him away from the young woman, but in the end it is revealed that the thug and Violence are partners in her extortion
“The Organization Man in the Gray Flannel Executive Suit”
Goodman Beaver is an editor hired by Schlock Publications Inc. During his time there, he loses his youthful idealism and succumbs to the corruption he finds in the publishing world. Goodman finds himself sexually harassing the secretaries, just as the other cynical executives at Schlock do, and ends up stealing from the company.
“Compulsion on the Range”
“Compulsion on the Range” is a satire that blends Westerns and Freudian pop psychology. In the 1950s, a trend of “adult” Westerns appeared in which characters were given psychological backgrounds to explain their motivations, as in The Left Handed Gun, in which an angst-ridden Billy the Kid gets his revenge after losing his father figure. In “Compulsion”, a psychologist tries to work out why Marshall Matt Dolin (a parody of James Arness as Marshal Matt Dillon from the popular Gunsmoke TV show) insists on trying to outshoot Johnny Ringding, chasing him across the West.
“Decadence Degenerated”
Four comics panels showing a group of men attempting to chat with a beautiful young woman as she walks by; as part of their dialogue balloons, they imagine her naked. Panels that inspired Art Spiegelman in the way Kurtzman experimented with formalities such as the portrayal of motion One of Kurtzman’s favorites, “Decadence Degenerated” is set in a town in the Deep South called Rottenville, where nothing happens until local beauty Honey Lou is found murdered. A quiet bookworm named Si Mednick is lynched for the murder because, as one of the yokels declares, “You cain not truss a man who reads!” The town sheriff overlooks the lynching, despite the presence of a “Northern” reporter —actually from the northern part of the state.