Humbug Archival Project from Fantagraphics

By Mark Kaufman

The 2009 Fantagraphics catalogue showed up in my mailbox the other day, and lo and behold it looks like they will be releasing a 300-page book of Humbug, the Harvey Kurtzman edited, post Mad humor magazine from the late 1950s. This is HUGE for fanboys of a certain age. I have never seen more than a snippet here or there of  Humbug, and I am looking forward to getting my mitts on a copy to see what all the hubub was about. The magazine was short-lived and apparantly was a financial disaster for Mr. Kurtzman. Fantagraphics and publisher Gary Groth always do a top-notch job on these archival projects, and there looks to be many extras in addition to the reprints of all 11 copies, like interviews with two of the surviving contributors Al Jaffee and Arnold Roth fer cryin’ out loud. Chistmas is just around the corner, hint, hint. Book to be released in February, you can pre-order now. Ahhhh…Humbug.