Esteemed comedy writer and television producer Josh Lieb creates an excellent daily Substack blog, "Cartoons I Can't Draw," in which he writes a gag cartoon each day and invites his readers to draw it. On the days when no reader has submitted a drawing, Josh will garnish his entry with a page from an old comic book, usually from the website comicbookplus.com. This website publishes what it calls "free and legal," "public domain" comic books.
This week, scouring the website for an interesting page, Josh came across a comic book newly uploaded to the site: TIP TOP #36, dated April, 1939. On page 54 are the results of "Buffalo Bob Contest No. 15," for which readers were invited to draw a cartoon based on an illustration of Buffalo Bob on the hunt and about to step into a bear trap.
One of the published runners-up is a cartoon from "Harvey Kurtzman, 2166 Clinton Ave., Bronx, New York," showing a young man (Harvey) pushing Bob away from the trap, with the caption: "If I don't save Bob now how the heck am I goin to win the contest?"
Kurtzman would go on to become not only one of the most influential cartoonists of all time, but, as Josh correctly argues in his blog entry, one of the most influential humorists of any type.
"It's young Harvey Kurtzman, who was twelve years away from reinventing American popular humor. He would've been 14 or 15 when this came out. In the early 50's, he created (and entirely wrote) MAD comics, and then turned them into MAD Magazine. I would argue that he had more individual influence on what we consider funny today than anyone else in the 20th century. Change my mind."
Kurtzman was born October 3, 1924, so with a cover date of April, 1939, he would have been 14 years old when this was comic book published. This must be Kurtzman's first nationally published work, but I'll leave confirmation to the historians.
By the way, on Sundays, Josh will often post funny articles and stories that he's written, and I can't help but include here a link to the genius, hilarious story he posted on Sunday, a "Thanksgiving Story" titled "Review: Aunt Betty's House."
