Harvey Kurtzman's Jungle Book (Essential Kurtzman) Hardcover – December 16, 2014

Note: Reviews on the book's first release (long out of print) are being lumped together with this new edition. The book's insides, stories, art, etc have already been covered. My focus is primarily on the physical product. I've had the original out of print book downloaded in pdf format for years and finally I was exited to finally be able to buy the physical book. It is extremely well made, binding well sewn, cover character is glossy embossed, thick page stock, colors well chosen to contrast opposing areas, and page breaks with patterns and Harvey's character punctuate the stories. Great thought and care was put into this. It must have been costly. I can't find anywhere in the acknowledgements or elsewhere, credit to the book designer. Which seems unfortunate. A page on the subject would have been nice, as printing quality was something Harvey always fought for. The black interesting cloth over the binding is screen printed on with white lettering and logos. The original shape/size of the book has been exadurated to a unique comic book-like oblong size which works very well considering the format of the art inside. About 8"x 12" Which will also do well to fit the next volume's content, Harvey Kurtzman's "Hey Look" comic strips. The book's cover price is US 25.00 but I bought it from Amazon which always sells for well below.It is worth the cover price. Personally I love high quality book's and I very much love this book. I love this just holding it and feeling the cover!A few writings are featured by Dennis Kitchen, Robert Crumb and others. My only nitpick is in wishing someone would have written about Harvey's last days. He would have been proud and happy to see this.Further Reading:I'll end this review quoting My favorite part in the Jungle Book. It's about the comic book format which I've always found strange, no real first page, art shrunk down so small, etc. first time I read, "The Organization Man in the Flannel Executive Suite" I laughed out loud...."We keep our investment low, income high, margin of profit wide. Since cover stock accounts for half our production costs, we'll illiminate expensive cover stock and print covers directly on first and last pages of the body will cut costs 50%... And if we cut costs on the body of the book, the same as we do on the covers, we will have a margin of profit of 100% the gross. "-Genius!-"But Mr Shlock if you aluminate the cover and you eliminate the body there's nothing left to sell and there will be no profit."- "Nothing left to sell??? By golly he's right! There is nothing left!";)

The book that broke Harvey's heart in its first edition is given proper treatment at last. After leaving Mad magazine (which he essentially created) and Hugh Hefner pulling the rug out from under him and canceling "Trump" after two spectacular issues, Kurtzman was left adrift both financially and professionally. This book, in a just universe, would have changed that. HOWEVER, the first publisher botched the job from the get go, making the artwork murky or marred with lines. Its amateur look and lack of promotion meant that it sold very few copies with the vast majority being rendered into pulp This edition is everything the original was not, beautifully produced with the artwork having the vibrancy Kurtzman intended. In some ways this is an essential read as it was one of the very first graphic novels geared to grown ups. There is a great introduction by the creator of "Maus" and another by the volume editor. Each section is introduced with an opinion on the piece by Harvey Kurtzman himself. One thing that he concluded, that many readers may agree with, is that he was far less talented as a writer as he was an illustrator. This is the first and ONLY time Harvey tried to fill both roles. The writing is the one downside of this collection, little of it is as biting, or as acerbically comedic as it should be. Still very much worth reading, its humor is on the dry side as opposed to laugh out loud funny. If you have an interest in the man whose name is attached to one of the supreme cartooning awards, or the history of the graphic novel, this is a must buy. Others may not find it as compelling. Still, it is an important book that deserves a far wider audience this time around.

I began reading MAD when I was 8 years old, back in 1964. My favorite part of MAD were the 50 cent books they sold at the time, The Mad Reader, Mad Strikes Back, Inside Mad, Utterly Mad and The Brothers Mad, all reprints of the MAD comic book days. Harvey Kurtman's humor shaped my sense of humor as I was growing up.

Kurtzman is a comics genius and this work, at times, reflects that. The art is generally quite good. You can tell he was really trying to develop a particular style, which he sometime achieves. The writing, however, is generally poor. The satire, if mildly amusing at the time of its release, is tired and dated now. If you a Kurtzman completist buy this and enjoy it, but don't expect it in any way to compare to any of his work at EC.

Kurtzman may have been a genius, but I don't think this is his best work. A couple of the stories are good, but it's not on par with his work at Mad.

Great to learn more about this very important figure in comic book history.

A fantastic book. So underrated that it is sad!

A must have for any Kurtzman fan.

L'ouvrage n'était pas réédité et donc impossible à trouver. Je l'ai acheté après avoir lu l'avis enthousiaste de Wolinski "Le pire a de l'avenir" que je conseille fortement malgré ses nombreuses répétitions. Kurtzman était vraiment un maître et j'ai découvert un humour corrosif, un dessin nerveux, fouillé, une vue sur l'Amérique toujours pleine de surprises ainsi qu'un talent de conteur exceptionnel. A lire impérativement pour augmenter le champ de sa vision de l'Humanité !

As Amazon's own review rightly says - one of the top hundred comics of all time and a lost classic. This has been a long time coming. For the last fifty-odd years I've had to make do with my original Ballantine paperback, with the pages falling out - they weren't really made to last - so it's great to have a brand-spanking new, excellent quality, hardback edition - and in a larger format, too!For anyone who might not know, Harvey Kurtzman was the genius behind the original MAD comic book and the early issues of the magazine it evolved into in order to circumvent the Comics Code. After the first issues, Kurtzman and MAD publisher William M. Gaines went their separate ways and Al Feldstein stepped in as editor to guide MAD into the legendary publication it would become. Sadly, Kurtzman would never again emulate the success of those early MADs - except for JUNGLE BOOK, where once again his parodies of popular entertainment, in this case the Private Eye TV show, The Tennessee Williams-type Deep South drama, the Western and the Executive Suite-type office drama are spot-on and very, very funny.Kurtzman's cartooning style was very quirky, but is well suited to his writing style - particularly as every word in the stories is hand-lettered, too. He would go on to great success as the creator - with artist pal Will Elder - of LITTLE ANNIE FANNY in Hugh Hefner's Playboy magazine, but even that strip falls short of his MAD success (in spite of the beautiful Will Elder art). Even JUNGLE BOOK was a loss maker for Ballantine and Kurtzman himself at the time, but the years have been kind to his one-off book and it has attracted a huge and devoted, cult-like following. A must-have for comic book fans - I'd give it six stars if I could.

Many thanks