Kurtzman Did Trump

Kurtzman did TRUMP.  Wait!  This is probably a Trump you did not know existed.  It lasted only two issues.  The creator of MAD stayed around for 24 to about 29 issues, then he was fired.  Hugh Hefner, the publisher of PLAYBOY promised to let him do a mag similar to MAD, but with more freedom.  The new know-no limits magazine was named TRUMP. 

It lasted two issues.

TRUMP was classier, funnier, and glossier than MAD.   But the one thing MAD had over TRUMP that it still exists, sort of.

Even though I have the original two TRUMP Magazines they have became in time became wrinkled.  A couple years ago Denis Kitchen, of Kitchen Sink Publishers offered the two TRUMPs reprint in one hardbound volume.  I bought one, flipped through it, knowing every story by heart, put it down.  And it went unopened again yesterday.

I did not know it put this hardbound has, as I said, the original pictures and text, but also a narration by Denis Kitchen of the story and/or a deeper look into Kurtzman and artists mind, during the production of TRUMP.

I’m reading it studying the Kitchen text for details.  For instance the mock American Express ad below:  I did not know  artist Will Elder was drawing the two surprised  guards with the likeness of Harvey Kurtzman in mind.