A BIRTHDAY SALUTE to one of comics’ greatest… — UPDATED 10/3/26: The late, great Harvey Kurtzman was born 102 years ago! Perfect time to reprint this piece from his birthday in 2023. Dig it. — Dan — By PAUL KUPPERBERG Comedy has many mothers, but for my sense of humor there was only one funny father: Harvey Kurtzman (October 3, 1924 – February 21, 1993). I don’t know what that means either, but it doesn’t matter. It’s funny. Like Harvey Kurtzman. Growing up, my taste ran toward the over-the-top, absurdist humor of the Three Stooges, the Marx Brothers, Jerry Lewis, and the 1940s Warner Bros. cartoons. I was attracted to subversive comedy, although I didn’t know that’s what it was called. I just knew it was the stuff that made grown-ups make that disapproval-face. My tastes were formed in the 1960s, when American society and humor was struggling to break free of 1950s conformity and conventionality. One of the most accessible sources of subversive thought for kids was Mad Magazine. Then edited by Al Feldstein, Mad could be counted on to make fun of everything, from the advertising that tried selling every box of soap as a miracle product to the politicians who tried selling soap as the truth. “Trust nothing!” Mad Magazine told its young readers, “And don’t forget to laugh at it!” Equally important as the new issues of Mad, and even funnier, if possible, were the paperback reprints of the Mad comic book, the original 23 10¢ four-color issues published between 1952 and 1955. Originally published by Ballantine Books, the first five paperbacks (The MAD Reader, MAD Strikes Back, Inside MAD, Utterly MAD, and The Brothers MAD) contained comic book parodies of movies, television, radio, comic books, and society under the editorial and creative eye of the Brooklyn born Kurtzman, king of schmaltz humor. Harvey Kurtzman was either (A) a master craftsman who knew precisely what he wanted, or (B) a total pain-in-the-ass control freak. But what difference does it make? He didn’t just script stories, he presented his artists like Will Elder, Wally Wood, Jack Davis, and John Severin with fully realized layouts already on the boards, often with the lettering already in place, but the results were some of the funniest comics ever created. Harvey evidently also stood firm in what he wanted from...