Harvey Kurtzman, Will Elder - Goodman Beaver torrent

'Goodman Beaver'

Kitchen Sink Press, 1984, 159 pages

Written by Harvey Kurtzman

Illustrated by Will Elder

Goodman Beaver is a comics character created by American cartoonist Harvey Kurtzman. Goodman was a naïve and optimistic Candide-like character, oblivious to the corruption and degeneration around him. The stories were vehicles for biting social satire and pop culture parody. Except for the character's first appearance, which Kurtzman did solo, the stories were written by Kurtzman and drawn by Will Elder.

Goodman first appeared in a story in Harvey Kurtzman's Jungle Book in 1959, but the best-remembered strips were the five stories produced by the Kurtzman—Elder team in 1961–1962 for the Kurtzman-edited magazine Help!. They tended to be in the parodic style Kurtzman had developed when he did Mad in the 1950s, but with more pointed, adult-oriented satire and much more refined and detailed draftsmanship on Elder's part, crammed with countless visual gags.

The most famous of the Goodman Beaver stories was "Goodman Goes Playboy". A satire on the hedonistic lifestyle of Hugh Hefner using parodies of Archie Comics characters, the story drew the ire of the Archie's publisher, which threatened a lawsuit. The issue was settled out of court, and the copyright for the story passed to Archie Comics. Hefner, the actual target of the strip, found it amusing, which led to Kurtzman and Elder developing a female version of Goodman Beaver for Playboy magazine called Little Annie Fanny.