What, Me Hurry?

Yes, you should hurry and see the spectacular show of Harvey Kurtzman's work at the Society of Illustrators in NYC which opens tomorrow night.
I grew up surrounded by more of Kurtzman than I even realized; both in the pages of MAD, hidden beneath the draughtsmanship of other artists like Wally Wood and Jack Davis and emblazoned in his own hand on the covers of EC comics titles like Two Fisted Tales and Frontline Comics. He also had more to do with my pubescent development than I care to discuss thanks to his work on Little Annie Fannie, a comic I secretly enjoyed in the purloined pages of my brother Nick's Playboy magazines. Growing up and reading comics in the early '70's, I was too enamored of the detailed, relatively realistic work of artists like Bernie Wrightson and Frank Frazetta, to appreciate the true genius of Harvey Kurtzman's undiluted storytelling.
If you have any interest in comics, graphic novels and especially storyboarding for animation, this exhibition is a master class in the art form which I cannot recommend strongly enough. What you will see in every panel of a Kurtzman strip, whether quickly jotted down in his own hand or rendered dutifully by another's, is story telling in it's purest form.
Kurtzman himself is long gone now, but his work remains to instruct and remind us that in the right hands, Less is Moronic.
In a good way.