Nature's Plagiarism

About 1985 I went to a family reunion up in the North Georgia Mountains.   I have been to this branch of the family reunion several times before and got to know some of my distant cousins.

I went with George to his car to help him carry drinks to the food table.  George is married to my distant cousin, so that makes George a distant-cousin-in-law.  We had a long walk.  On the way I asked him what was new.  He asked me did his wife tell me he was being considered to be head of his department at a prestigious college he was a professor at.  I said, yes she did.

George said, “Well, I didn’t get it.”

He went on to say how sorry and low-down was the person that did get it.  He said the only thing he had working for him was his mouth, he was a smooth talker.  The more he talked about it the more angrier he got.  His voice was quivering and he was crying.  I calmed him down as best I could and we carried the drinks back to the food table.  I don’t thin anybody suspected he was  very upset just minutes before.

Whoever picked George’s adversary to be head of he department probably knew what he/she was doing.  George died about t wo years later and his wife, also an educator, died shortly after that.

But this story is taking a turn to a completely different subject, abut will tie itself in.

I am reading (or looking) at the book MAN AND SUPERMAN AND OTHER STORIES ILLUSTRATED BY HARVEY KURTZMAN.   The late Harvey Kurtzman is known widely for creating MAD comicbook and  magazine and two EC Publishing War comicbooks.  He also contributed a lot to the other EC comic books, such as SCIENCE FANTASY, CRIME and more.  This book is a collection of his other stories he created for EC.

Today I read/looked/ Kurtzman’s THE MAN WHO RACED TIME.  Guess what it about?  It is about a college professor who had hopes of getting promoted to the head of the department but some else, a smooth talker, was picked instead and he didn’t take it well.

Just like George!

Of course this guy blew off steam by plotting revenge which the rest of tI w  he story is about.

I was amazed at the similarity of George and the comicbook story.  The first 2 pages were identical.  Like I said Georges event was about 1985 and Kurtzman wrote and illustrated the story in 1950s.

No plagiarism.