Harvey Kurtzman's Jungle Book (Essential Kurtzman) Hardcover – December 16, 2014

Note: Reviews on the book's first release (long out of print) are being lumped together with this new edition. The book's insides, stories, art, etc have already been covered. My focus is primarily on the physical product.I've had the original out of print book downloaded in pdf format for years and finally I was exited to finally be able to buy the physical book. It is extremely well made, binding well sewn, cover character is glossy embossed, thick page stock, colors well chosen to contrast opposing areas, and page breaks with patterns and Harvey's character punctuate the stories. Great thought and care was put into this. It must have been costly. I can't find anywhere in the acknowledgements or elsewhere, credit to the book designer. Which seems unfortunate. A page on the subject would have been nice, as printing quality was something Harvey always fought for. The black interesting cloth over the binding is screen printed on with white lettering and logos. The original shape/size of the book has been exadurated to a unique comic book-like oblong size which works very well considering the format of the art inside. About 8"x 12" Which will also do well to fit the next volume's content, Harvey Kurtzman's "Hey Look" comic strips. The book's cover price is US 25.00 but I bought it from Amazon which always sells for well below.It is worth the cover price. Personally I love high quality book's and I very much love this book. I love this just holding it and feeling the cover!A few writings are featured by Dennis Kitchen, Robert Crumb and others. My only nitpick is in wishing someone would have written about Harvey's last days. He would have been proud and happy to see this.Further Reading:I'll end this review quoting My favorite part in the Jungle Book. It's about the comic book format which I've always found strange, no real first page, art shrunk down so small, etc. first time I read, "The Organization Man in the Flannel Executive Suite" I laughed out loud...."We keep our investment low, income high, margin of profit wide. Since cover stock accounts for half our production costs, we'll illiminate expensive cover stock and print covers directly on first and last pages of the body will cut costs 50%... And if we cut costs on the body of the book, the same as we do on the covers, we will have a margin of profit of 100% the gross. "-Genius!-"But Mr Shlock if you aluminate the cover and you eliminate the body there's nothing left to sell and there will be no profit."- "Nothing left to sell??? By golly he's right! There is nothing left!";)

I began reading MAD when I was 8 years old, back in 1964. My favorite part of MAD were the 50 cent books they sold at the time, The Mad Reader, Mad Strikes Back, Inside Mad, Utterly Mad and The Brothers Mad, all reprints of the MAD comic book days. Harvey Kurtman's humor shaped my sense of humor as I was growing up.

Great to learn more about this very important figure in comic book history.

Kurtzman is a comics genius and this work, at times, reflects that. The art is generally quite good. You can tell he was really trying to develop a particular style, which he sometime achieves. The writing, however, is generally poor. The satire, if mildly amusing at the time of its release, is tired and dated now. If you a Kurtzman completist buy this and enjoy it, but don't expect it in any way to compare to any of his work at EC.

A fantastic book. So underrated that it is sad!

A must have for any Kurtzman fan.

Kurtzman RULES!

Kurtzman may have been a genius, but I don't think this is his best work. A couple of the stories are good, but it's not on par with his work at Mad.