The artistic and cultural footprint of cult cartoonist Harvey Kurtzman reaches across decades, from turbulent 1950s New York through to his death in the 1990s and this engrossingly engaging documentary strikingly helps reinforce how the man who created MAD Magazine helped redefine American humour and visual storytelling. The film world-premiered August 16 at Edinburgh International Film Festival.
With astute use of archival material interwoven with insights from cultural figures shaped by his legacy, including Matt Groening (The Simpsons); filmmaker Terry Gilliam; various family members and artists such as Robert Crumb and Art Spiegelman, the film’s director Bart Simpson has crafted a fascinating look at a remarkable man. The film also features handcrafted animation and an original jazz score.
Utilising a straightforward chronological structure, Simpson opens his film with Kurtzman’s friend Dennis Kitchen, guardian of the estate and artwork of Kurtzman, going through the massive amount of material with one of Kurtzman’s daughters, with her recalling some of the artwork – but in truth not having seen most of it – with a view to finding a full-time archive for the work.
Born in Brooklyn in 1924, Kurtzman showed his cartoon skills while at college, and turned professional in the 1950s when the comic world was changing, starting work with the New Trend line at EC Comics, where he wrote and edited the Two-Fisted Tales and Frontline Combat war comics. He had been in service at 18 and hated it, but “loved telling the truth about what war was really like,” but was also investigated by the FBI for anti-war comic books. He went on to createMAD in 1952, scripting the stories as well as working with top EC cartoonists such as Wally Wood, Will Elder and Jack Davis.
He unknowingly started a revolution of sorts. His relentless perfectionism and singular vision quickly set him apart, but MAD switched to a magazine format in 1955, and Kurtzman ended up leaving in 1956 over a dispute with EC’s owner William Gaines over financial control.
He veered between cartooning work in magazines such as the short-lived Trump, set up by Playboy head Hugh Heffner, the self-published Humbug, and from 1960 to ’65 edited Help!, a magazine which featured work by Gloria Steinem and future Monty Python member and film director Terry Gilliam, as well as featuring the earliest work of underground cartoonists such as Robert Crumb. The magazine made frequent use of Italian-style ‘fumetti’ photographic comics, which sometimes starred celebrities like Woody Allen and a pre-Monty Python John Cleese.
Kurtzman approached Hefner in 1960 with the idea of a comic strip feature for Playboy that would star Goodman Beaver, a character he created for Help!, but after discussions the character morphed into a voluptuous woman named Little Annie Fanny, becoming Playboy magazines’ first comic-strip.
Kurtzman visited Europe where he found himself lauded for his work and in the 1970s his stature began to grow. In 1973, New York’s School of Visual Arts asked him to take a teaching position there in cartooning. He went on to suffer from Parkinson’s disease and colon cancer later in life, eventually dying in 1993.
The film features rare and unseen interviews with Kurtzman and those closest to him, alongside insights from cultural figures shaped by his legacy. He was a dynamic, creative and charismatic individual – blessed with great artistic ability but never at ease when it came to the financial side of running magazines. His influence on art and culture over a long period was profound, but the film is at its best when reinforcing Kurtzman’s own artistic talents.
As director Bart Simpson adds: “Harvey Kurtzman’s comics scared me when I was young. His warping of the idealized life I saw on TV and in magazines felt funny but forbidden at the same time. I wanted Harvey to tell his own story as much as possible, and diving deep into the rich textures of his archives allowed us to build the visual and musical environment that captured the awkward, cheeky and daring attitude that leaps from his pages.”
UK-Canada, 2026, 92mins
Dir: Bart Simpson
Production: Intuitive Pictures, Aconite Productions
Producers: Ina Fichman, Aimara Reques
Cinematography: Alex Lampron, Alana Mejia Gonzalez
Editors: Tom Randaxhe, Colin Monie
Music: Marty Hailey
With: Sergio Aragones, Robert Crumb, Sarah Downs, Gareth Gaudin, Terry Gilliam, Karen Green, Matt Groening, Al Jaffee, Denis Kitchen, Adele Kurtzman, Meredith Kurtzman, Nellie Kurtzman, Pete Poplaski, Arnold Roth, Art Spiegelman, William Stout, James Warren
