{"id":6030,"date":"2011-01-04T06:00:40","date_gmt":"2011-01-04T06:00:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/?p=6030"},"modified":"2011-01-02T17:45:56","modified_gmt":"2011-01-02T17:45:56","slug":"betsy%e2%80%99s-buddies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/2011\/01\/04\/betsy%e2%80%99s-buddies\/","title":{"rendered":"Betsy’s Buddies"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\nBy Harvey Kurtzman<\/strong> & Sarah Downs<\/strong> (Kitchen Sink Press)
\nISBN: 0-87816-029-9<\/p>\n

Harvey Kurtzman is probably the most important cartoonist of the last half of the 20th<\/sup> century. His triumphs in the fledgling field of comicbooks (Frontline Combat, Two-Fisted Tales, Mad) would be enough for most creators to lean back on but Kurtzman was an innovator, a commentator and a social explorer who kept on creating, kept on observing and with satire magazines such as the black and white magazine Mad (a highly successful format he invented), further inspirations Trump<\/strong>, Humbug <\/strong>and Help!<\/strong>, all the while still creating challenging and powerfully effective funny strips such as Little Annie Fannie<\/em> (for Playboy<\/strong>), The Jungle Book<\/em>, Nutz<\/em>, Goodman Beaver<\/em> and the strip on review here. He died far too soon in 1993.<\/p>\n

This superb hardcover volume was collected by that much-missed champion of all things grand, esoteric and\/or naughty in comics, Denis Kitchen through his Kitchen Sink Press outfit, and collects the racy, revelatory exploits of young Betsy, a fresh, if not so innocent student in the jaded halls of Academia and the Big City, a full-on, dedicated Sexual Revolutionary – at least by her own lights. Through one and two page exploits (all the colour strips were previously printed in Playboy<\/strong> whilst the black and white adventures have no single source or provenance I can find), this feisty femme – in a still mostly man’s world \u00e2\u20ac\u201c endeavours to live her life by her own ready-made rules.<\/p>\n

She’s got an apartment, a nudist roommate, a horny law-student boyfriend and enough savvy, modern sense not to tell anybody she’s shagging her English Lit Professor. Her classy, sophisticated, raucous riotous, hilariously true-to-life exploits and uniquely female viewpoint come in no small part from Sarah Downs, who was Kurtzman’s associate, assistant and co-writer in the 1980s, and a highly skilled colourist and teacher of cartooning at the School of Visual Arts.<\/p>\n

As well as these delightful adult strips they also produced material for Europe together seen in such classy mature vehicles as L’Echo des Savannes<\/em> and she also appeared in the Marvel Epic all-star anthology Harvey Kurtzman’s Strange Adventures<\/strong> (coming soon to a graphic novel review blog near you\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6)<\/p>\n

Sharp, sassy, wickedly barbed and penetratingly insightful about the differences that draw men and women together Betsy’s Buddies<\/strong> is an utter delight and long overdue for a fresh edition and another close look\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6
\n\u00c2\u00a9 1988 Harvey Kurtzman and Sarah Downs. Entire contents \u00c2\u00a9 1988 Kitchen Sink Press. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Harvey Kurtzman & Sarah Downs (Kitchen Sink Press) ISBN: 0-87816-029-9 Harvey Kurtzman is probably the most important cartoonist of the last half of the 20th century. His triumphs in the fledgling field of comicbooks (Frontline Combat, Two-Fisted Tales, Mad) would be enough for most creators to lean back on but Kurtzman was an innovator, … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Betsy’s Buddies”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[64,90,113,111],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6030","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adulterotica","category-cartooning-classics","category-comedy","category-satirepolitics"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4AFj-1zg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6030","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6030"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6030\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6030"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6030"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.comicsreview.co.uk\/nowreadthis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6030"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}