PBA Comics: Kurtzman Update

There’s good news and bad news on the Kurtzman front. The good news is, if my son’s Hey Look fanaticism is any indication, there’s a market for Kurtzman’s brilliant pre-Mad gag strip among our nations’ youth… The bad news is, a new version of the collected Hey Look isn’t likely anytime soon. I asked Kurtzman’s estate handler Denis Kitchen for news to share, and he told me this:

“It’s on hold till publishing gets back to normal. My Kitchen Sink Books partner John Lind and I have to discuss pending projects with Dark Horse when the time is right. 2020 looks dead and no one has a clue what 2021 will be like. The sales on our last couple of HK books (Complete Trump and Jungle Book), though critically acclaimed, were disappointing so it’s possible that DH will discourage publication of Hey Look! If that’s the case we’ll look at a Kickstarter option I imagine.”

In the meantime, there’s the wonderful 1992 Kitchen Sink edition, sadly out-of-print (paperback copies typically fetch $40-60; the signed hardcover sells for about $150-200). Here are a few strips, originally printed in various Timely comics edited by a young Stan Lee in the mid-to-late 1940s. Denis Kitchen promises that his updated edition will be published in full color.

-Ivan Briggs, PBA Galleries Director of Comics