Book contents
- The Cambridge Companion to the American Graphic Novel
- The Cambridge Companion to the American Graphic Novel
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Contributors
- Editors’ Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Part I History and Genre
- 1 The “First” Graphic Novel in America
- 2 The Mad-Men Generation
- 3 From Justin Green and Art Spiegelman to Alison Bechdel
- 4 Graphic Journalism
- 5 “Great” American Graphic Novels
- 6 Crime
- 7 Superheroes in Graphic Novels
- 8 Science Fiction and Fantasy
- 9 “Scared Witless”
- Part II Graphic Novels and the Quest for an American Diversity
- Index
- Cambridge Companions To …
- References
2 - The Mad-Men Generation
Kurtzman and Feiffer
from Part I - History and Genre
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 January 2024
- The Cambridge Companion to the American Graphic Novel
- The Cambridge Companion to the American Graphic Novel
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Contributors
- Editors’ Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Part I History and Genre
- 1 The “First” Graphic Novel in America
- 2 The Mad-Men Generation
- 3 From Justin Green and Art Spiegelman to Alison Bechdel
- 4 Graphic Journalism
- 5 “Great” American Graphic Novels
- 6 Crime
- 7 Superheroes in Graphic Novels
- 8 Science Fiction and Fantasy
- 9 “Scared Witless”
- Part II Graphic Novels and the Quest for an American Diversity
- Index
- Cambridge Companions To …
- References
Summary
This chapter deals with the idiosyncratic works of two key authors from the Mad magazine generation: Harvey Kurtzman and Jules Feiffer. It addresses more specifically the distinctive satirical styles of both authors, who criticized and reconfigured, from a leftist and Jewish immigrant background, the standard signifiers of American mainstream culture. Although both authors contributed equally to the tradition of American cartooning, their work in the graphic novel field is highly divergent. Kurtzman started at EC in the war comics subgenre, but rapidly turned to humor magazines, before introducing an important stand-alone comics paperback with original material, Harvey Kurtzman’s Jungle Book, whose incongruous humor relied on clever, repetitive panel layouts. Like Kurtzman, Feiffer is adept at transmedial appropriation, but his work, which started under Will Eisner’s tutelage, is less focused on citational humor and both more personal and more political. Instead, Feiffer developed singular forms of graphic narratives targeting conformism. The chapter offers close readings of Kurtzman’s Jungle Book and Feiffer’s noir trilogy: Kill My Mother, Cousin Joseph, and The Ghost Script (all from the 2010s).
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- The Cambridge Companion to the American Graphic Novel , pp. 38 - 56Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2023