After the failure of Humbug Harvey Kurtzman had nowhere to go. he was trying to sell articles to Playboy and not really getting on with that. A proposal for a second paperback of his short illustrated stories did not really sell. But fortunately A publsher called Warren was a fan of his work. He approached Jurtzman to head up a Monsters of Filmworld type of magazine, but this time about Westerns. And he hoped that Kurtman would bring his regular contributors and give it his own brand of humor. Well, for the budget Warren had, Kurtzman could only get a cover of pages and a cover from his regulars. And the humor had to be in the form of captioned photos. But he had something there and it was soon decided that that something would fit better in a magazine of it's own, which ended up being Help and ran for a couple of years (we are still waiting for a complete collecition or at least a best off. Kurtzman left Wildest Westerns woth the second issue, but did leave some work behind, which was used in #3 and #4. These magazines are now hard to get and because of the duel interest in them (western and Kurtzman) can get very pricey. Fortunately some of them recently became available in digital form, so I ca share at least some of the goodies.
2 comments:
Thanks for this, Ger. By the way, I hope you will forgive my impertinence, but I would like to take the opportunity, since this particular blog has a "western" theme: asking for your expertise at some point in assessing and analysing (with samples if possible) what appears to be one of the real hidden gems of a western strip by Bob Schoenke, originating in the late '40's into the '50’s, namely “Laredo Crockett” and its predecessor “Jack Armstrong”. I haven’t seen these addressed as yet on your blog. Thanks.
I have seen a lot of Laredo Crocked and Jack Armstrong on the paid newspaper websites. I never clipped it, because it did not really appeal to me. If I come across it again, I wil pick one or two out to talk about it.
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