Trump: The Complete Collection (Essential Kurtzman)

I owned the original two issues of Trump Magazine that somehow disappeared when I moved to another state. This volume contains the entire contents of both magazines plus additional features, all in hardcover format. Published by Playboy founder, Hugh Hefner with many illustrations by some of Mad Magazine's best artists. Although, as a reprint it's not nearly as collectable or as monetarily valuable as the originals, the content is exactly the same, and won't disappoint.

I remember seeing the first issue of Trump on display among many other magazines and comic books at a neighborhood Bronx candy store, sixty years ago. It caught my eye somehow. I was able to thumb through it briefly, marveling at the interior graphics, Elder's color illustrations, and the glossy paper. I knew, at the age of eight, that it was a MAD offshoot, and wanted it desperately, but my mother refused to give me the fifty cents needed to buy it, which I understood, because that was an awfully steep price for a magazine in 1956 or '57. I was, nonetheless, bitterly disappointed. I had no success convincing her to let me buy issue #2, either, and I was, again, deeply disappointed. I was somewhat consoled, a few months later, when Humbug appeared, with Kurtzman's characteristically eye-catching, outrageously original covers, and at a far more reasonable cover price of fifteen cents. I bought every issue of Humbug, and rejoiced when it, like Mad, became a full-fledged, twenty five cent magazine. But just a few issues later, Humbug folded. Much later, I saw Kurtzman's Help! in the magazine rack, and thumbed through it, but it just didn't speak to me. Kurtzman seemed to have lost his way, or at least gone in a new direction that alienated me as a reader. Gone, as well, were the stable of familiar, mostly Jewish illustrators, and largely gone, it seemed, was that New York Jewish sensibility that imbued all of Kurtzman's earlier efforts, and that appealed to me even as a boy of eight. I never overcame my regret about being unable to acquire Trump, and hoped for years that one day both issues would be republished. A few years ago, a reissue was announced, but was, for some reason, scotched. I had given up all hope of ever seeing these magazines resurrected, but then accidentally, during a web search, discovered that Kitchen Sink had finally done this, and that all the material for the unpublished third issue was also included. Prior to my purchasing this edition, which I did hastily, I had in fact seen some excerpts from the Trump issues that appeared in a biography of Will Elder, published some years back. The quality of this work was very high indeed, and I was eager to see all of Elder's work for Trump.Well, I've finished reading this book, and I came to a sober realization...I now understand why Hefner pulled the plug. The magazine, as he said, just didn't seem to be coming together. It was desultory and uneven, and not particularly funny, although many of the articles were clever. But I didn't laugh. I still look at old Mad comics, and find many of the stories as hilarious today as they were sixty years ago. Starchie, Howdy Dooit, Gasoline Valley, Restaurant!... they're evergreen, as are the ineffable graphic layouts and astounding covers of many of the comic book Mads as well as all of the twenty five cent magazine format Mads edited by Kurtzman. But in Trump, something's missing. Kurtzman's work - so similar to what he did for Mad - was no longer fresh. The comic strip parodies, the Scenes We'd Like to See stuff, and a whole host of other material was already familiar from Mad, and starting to seem repetitive. There are a few exceptions - Ira Wallach's God's Littered Acre and Mel Brooks's Death to a Salesman hold up well, but neither is written by Kurtzman. Also noteworthy are Elder's fake ads for Camel cigarettes and Lipton tea, and Wallace Wood's beautiful full-color illustrations for a nonexistent feature-length Disney cartoon. And Elder's Norman Rockwell-inspired Saturday Evening Post lampoon (unpublished, meant for Trump #3) is simply extraordinary, as is his Ages of Man foldout illustration. But again, I could see why Hefner had serious misgivings about this magazine. It lacked the freshness and, in the main, the audacity and originality of Mad, and Kurtzman seemed to be struggling. One other thing - at the end of the book, the annotator, Dennis Kitchen, makes a reference to Donald Trump, a comment I thought was gratuitous and inappropriate. But for anyone insatiably curious about the contents of this rare, previously elusive, upscale version of mid-to-late 1950s Mad which sought a more adult readership, I wouldn't hesitate to spend the twenty dollars needed to satisfy one's curiosity.

I've been a Kurtzman fan since the early fifties. He was a genius and his reputation has only improved over time. I bought both issues of Trump when they came out and I still have them. This book appealed to me because I knew nothing about how Trump came to be and why it only lasted two issues. I also liked seeing the material which would have followed in the third issue had it gone to press. Some of the humor is a little dated but some of the items, such as Trump's spoof of Life Magazine's Epic of Man are still hilarious. Trump also showcased some of the best art from Will Elder, Jack Davis, and others. The book is worth it for that alone. If you are a fan of comic art, Kurtzman, or 50's nostalgia, you can't lose if you buy it.

Harvey Kurtzman was a brilliant cartoonist and satirist. The comics industry's highest honor bears his name. He also, unfortunately, had little financial acumen. Harvey Kurtzman created "Mad" as a comic book and later converted it to a magazine, saving EC Publications from oblivion. Three issues into the magazine era of "Mad", Bill Gaines and Harvey Kurtzman had a bitter falling out. Editors Denis Kitchen and John Lind give various reasons why the one-time friends became bitter enemies. Most of it seems to come down to the fact that Kurtzman wanted a bigger share of "Mad" than Gaines was willing to surrender. Eight years later, Bill Gaines was a multimillionaire and Harvey Kurtzman was not.Divorced from his brainchild, Harvey found himself working for former cartoonist Hugh Hefner, who wanted a sophisticated humor magazine to increase the reach and influence of his "Playboy" empire. Two wonderful issues of "Trump" reached the newsstands before the proverbial crap hit the fan.Kitchen and Lind provide explanations as to why Hefner had to pull the plug so quickly on a project he once firmly believed in. Unfortunately, at least some of the blame goes to Kurtzman's inability to maintain a budget and to get his artists and writers to meet firm deadlines. Many familiar faces such as Wally Wood, Jack Davis, and Al Jaffe followed him, at least for a while from "Mad." What they created was a witty, sophisticated, more adult version of "Mad." Kurtzman spared no expense in an attempt to create the magazine of his dreams. That was another big problem, "Trump" was going to be a VERY expensive magazine to produce, no matter the editor. But what a beautiful magazine it was!Kitchen and Lind reprint the entire run of "Trump" front cover to back cover. Much of the humor still elicits chuckles. Because some of the material is dated (the magazine was produced in 1957) annotations to the features are provided. These are well written and informative without being pedantic.Also reconstructed, as much as possible, is what the aborted third issue may have looked like. Chock full of original artwork, artist insights, and, informed opinion, this is a book not to be missed. It is truly a shame that "Trump" could not have had more than an Icarus-like flight it really should have soared for a much longer time. I like to think that in an alternate universe, "Trump" is still on the newsstands.

This book provodes a history of Harvey Kurtzman's first attempt to publish his own humor magazine. Originally called X, Trump employed artists from Mad Magazine, giving them an opportunity to do work that was far more impressive in the fill-color format and high-grade reproductions used in the new magazine. Unfortunately for Kurtzman the cost of Trump was too high, even with Playboy magazine footing the bill. Too far ahead of its time, Trump only published two issues. The book includes the two full issues which went to press, as well as artwork from pieces planned out for #3.

These days, putting the name 'Trump' in large letters on the front of your book usually means you have something to say about the moron that adorned the White House until last year. But no, this isn't that. This about Harvey Kurtzman the man who, according to Adam Gopnik, reinvented American satirical humour post WW2. He did this largely in the pages of MAD magazine, where perhaps he should have stayed. However he had other ideas. He wanted to go full colour print, high-quality print pages and MAD's publishers couldn't stretch to it. If he'd stayed with MAD and had still been around when sales went through the roof, he'd possibly have been in a much better position to argue for something like what he got in Trump but, in the event, he went to Playboy publisher Hugh Hefner for it. How this worked out is recorded in this book. The whole contents of Trump's published issues is reproduced along with a lot of prepared material which didn't see publication, plus essays and interviews summarising everything that happened. It's a great historical document and Fantagraphics are to be congratulated for pulling it together.

A long time coming but certainly worth the wait. Reprinting the only two issues of the 1957 Trump, the background notes to what was in them and an interesting essay by Dennis Kitchen on the collaboration between Kurtzman and Hefner that made the magazine possible make this book a fascinating read.On page eleven there's a 1957 letter reproduced from Hefner to Kurtzman where Hefner mentions some Jack Davis cartoons and how he would like future artwork to be a bit more sophisticated and not so action comic like and it seems that Hefner, according to an interview with Bill Schelly in 2007, possibly thought this about the first two issues of Trump..."I did not see it coming together in a way that looked as if it would be successful." Did he think this because Kurtzman was basically a comic book editor rather than an upmarket humor magazine editor? Maybe Hefner's thoughts were coloured by a memo from Playboy's Art Director Arthur Paul who it seems was none too impressed with the look of the first issue. I think he has a point because both issues are rather uneven regarding the content and layout, in particular too many visually strong articles start on a right-hand page rather than opening powerfully on a spread and there is a lot of comic art and cartoons.I prefer the second issue to the first, more four-colour pages (twenty) than the first (seventeen) and some great material including stunning colour frames from Jack Davis based on the movie Giant, Sports Illustrated satire with a cover featuring the first head-on photo of a bullet, food photographs and four excellent spoof ads for the Container Corporation of America, Camel cigarettes, Canadian Club and Lipton tea. As a sort of bonus there are several pages devoted to the unpublished material for issue three though some of this ended up in Kurtzman's next magazine Humbug.It's a lovely book though I have a couple of criticisms, the reproductions of Trump are just a bit smaller than the real thing (by about quarter of an inch) and it would have helped if the pages had a very thin grey line round them defining the Trump page on the larger book's page.This is a celebration of Harvey Kurtzman's best work and if Hefner had deeper pockets it might have succeeded, least until the National Lampoon came along in the early seventies.

Il a fallu attendre 60 ans pour que soient réédités les deux seuls numéros du magazine mensuel "Trump" créé par Harvey Kurtzman - un des principaux animateurs d'"EC Comics" au début des années 1950 - fin 1956, avec le soutien de la maison d'édition de Hugh Hefner, le créateur du magazine Playboy. C'est donc pure coïncidence si cette publication intervient quelques semaines après l'élection de Donald Trump en tant que PUSA.Harvey Kurtzman (1924–1993) est un dessinateur, scénariste et rédacteur-en-chef de comic books états-unien de premier plan, au point que des prix accordés aux professionnels de la BD portent son nom aux USA. Il a notamment créé le magazine "Mad" et en a été l'editor de 1952 à 1956, moment où il s'est fâché avec Mr. Gaines, le patron d'EC Comics. Emmenant avec lui les principales têtes d'affiche de "Mad", après quelques mois de préparation et le soutien de Hugh Hefner, il créé le magazine "Trump" fin 1956. Ce périodique ne publiera que 2 numéros, Hefner devant faire face à une période financièrement difficile qui ne permettait plus de soutenir l'effort représenté par "Trump", Couleurs, papier glacé, 60+ pages, des délais très tendus, pas de publicité, un prix de vente sans commune mesure avec le reste des comic books de l'époque... "Trump" est un pari que même Hefenr ne pouvait tenir dans cette période difficile.Cet ouvrage qui se présente quasiment comme un "beau livre", le 2è dans une collection "Essential Kurtzman", reprend l'intégralité du contenu des deux numéros, une partie de ce qui aurait pu se retrouver dans le n° 3, des esquisses, ainsi qu'un matériel critique et historique particulièrement soigné, utile et éclairant signé Denis Kitchen. Les illustrateurs et dessinateurs sont Will Elder, Al Jaffee, Jack Davis (tous en pleine forme pour les parodies et les "à la manière de", notamment), Russ Heath (qui fait notamment du Picasso !?!) et Wallace Wood (qui fait du Disney des Burbank Studios tout en couleurs), autant dire le top de l'époque. Et des gaillards qui peuvent encore en remontrer aux dessinateurs actuels, bien entendu ! Il y a aussi une nouvelle d'un jeune Mel Brooks. Les inspirations sont variées : films, BD, littérature, séries télé, publicités, chanson (Elvis !), histoire, gastronomie, actualité, politique, médecine...Dans le fond comme dans la forme, ce livre est quasi exemplaire. ****1/2 (certaines illustrations auraient mérité, comme c'est le cas pour deux d'entre elles, des agrandissements).