Once upon a time, under the editorial helm of Harvey Kurtzman, MAD Magazine was the pinnacle of pop culture mockery. Kurtzman moved on, but… what did he do NEXT? Your Major Spoilers Retro Review of Help! #24 awaits!

HELP! #24

Writer:  Harvey Kurtzman/Ed Fisher/T.S. Sullivant/
Woody Gelman/Dave Crossley/Gilbert Shelton/Robert Crumb
Penciler: Robert Crumb/Ed Fisher/T.S. Sullivant/
Martin Iger/Gilbert Shelton
Inker: Robert Crumb/Ed Fisher/T.S. Sullivant/
Martin Iger/Gilbert Shelton
Letterer: Gilbert Shelton
Editor: Harvey Kurtzman/Terry Gilliam
Publisher: Help Magazine Inc. (Warren Publishing)
Cover Price: 35 Cents
Current Near-Mint Pricing: $80.00
Release Date: March 11, 1965

Previously in Help!: After a key role in EC Comics’ New Trend relaunch, Harvey Kurtzman and publisher Bill Gaines launched MAD Magazine, reputedly to help increase Kurtzman’s take-home pay. What happened then is the stuff of legend, skewering not just the comics and movies of the era, but political figures, social mores, and the fabric of life in the 1950s. After clashing with Gaines over editorial control, Harvey left EC Comics to work for Hugh Hefner, who once remarked that he “gave Harvey Kurtzman an unlimited budget, and he exceeded it.” After the cancellation of Trump, a fifty-cent, adult-oriented take on MAD, Kurtzman launched another magazine, Humbug, which he and his collaborators self-published for a year before it folded. In 1960, Kurtzman teamed with James Warren (the publisher who gave us Creepy, Eerie, Vampirella, and more) for another take at satirical magazinery, Help! Among his collaborators was a young Terry Gilliam, still a few years from his move to Great Britain and becoming a founding member of Monty Python’s Flying Circus. And speaking of Monty Python, let’s take a look at the real subject of today’s Retro Review, Christopher’s Punctured Romance.

If you’re here at Major Spoilers, you’re likely the kind of person who recognizes “Christopher Barrel” as then-25-year-old John Cleese, who was touring as part of a comedy show called The Cambridge Circus.

This was, by the way, how Gilliam and Cleese met, making this fumetti comic of special interest to me on two different levels of nerdery. As for our story, Chris Barrel lives the proverbial “life of quiet desperation,” experiencing too much sameness day over day, in both his soulless corporate advertising job and his perfectly-fine-but-rather-dispassionate marriage. “I don’t know,” he says, “I’ve got this ennui,” and I’ve seldom felt a fictional character’s lament so keenly. And then, Chris discovers his daughter’s new Barbee doll, and everything changes for him. Upon seeking out a midnight snack, he finds himself embroiled in a torrid affair!

The next morning, Chris is (understandably) shaken, believing it to be nothing more than a strange dream, but… Umm… It seems that’s not the case. Cleese’s wide range of expression works to the story’s favor, as he daydreams of Barbee during another life-sapping day in advertising. Returning home invigorated by his 1:6 scale affaire de coure, Chris is shocked to find betrayal hiding in Barbee’s tiny closet.

The look of shock on his wife, Wilma’s face is pretty amazing, thanks to model/actress Cindy Young, but Cleese makes Chris’ crushing fall from the heights of infatuation absolutely devastating. Photographer Martin Iger has a perfectly cinematic eye, framing each panel as deftly as if it were drawn by Jack Davis or Wally Wood. As the story comes to a close, Chris realizes that he still has passion for his wife, Wilma, and rushes to embrace her.

I’m not sure if you can call that final picture a Kubrick stare, as A Clockwork Orange was still half-a-decade away, but that final panel is one of the most chilling “happy endings” I’ve experienced in comics. Some would argue that the fumetti/fotonovela format doesn’t count, but I’ve always been a big-tent person on that score, especially given how slippery the definitions get. Given that Help! #24 also features an early adventure of Fritz the Cat by Robert Crumb, Gilbert Shelton’s Wonder Wart-Hog, and Kurtzman’s trademark humor throughout, which should show you just how highly I regard this story and why I give it 5 out of 5 stars overall.

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HELP! #24

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Living Rent-Free In My Brain For Decades

I first read this story in 1989, and I have quoted it ever since. As an 18-year-old, it was silly fun. As an adult, it's quite heart-rending, and perfectly fits the bill of "MAD Magazine for a young adult audience."

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