Cartoons of Playboy Past

Here's one of the very early Little Annie Fannys from before they started using assistants.

Their annual Christmas cards for the December 1963 issue. Obviously published before November 22, they had no idea what would happen then, and according to the Little Annie Fanny collection, excised all JFK material for their next issue at the last minute. As a bonus, the Kennedys are drawn by the great Jack Davis.

Also cards by Phil Interlandi, Gahan Wilson, Shel Silverstein, and Eldon Dedini.

From that same issue, the best of their cartoons from past issues up to that point. Also from the December 1963 issue.

On this page are John Dempsey, Erich Sokol, Phil Interlandi, and Bill Murphy

Phil Interlandi, Eldon Dedini, and E. Simms Campbell. I believe I posted the latter two before.

Charles Elmer Martin, John Dempsey, Dedini, and Claude Smith

Interlandi, Dempsey, Sid Harris, and Sokol

Interlandi, two by Murphy, and Dempsey. Everyone seems to be heterosexual at the nudist colony, but then again, this was before the protests at Stonewall changed everything.

Not sure who the upper left cartoonist is. The rest are Dempsey, Interlandi (again pre-Stonewall), and Gahan Wilson

Jack Davis in Playboy

Everybody knows Jack Davis. He's appeared everywhere. Quite frequently on this blog. In the fifties and sixties, he sold 15 cartoons to Playboy.

September 1956

May 1957

November 1958

February 1959

February 1960

January 1960

November 1960

November 1961

February 1961

October 1961

The original for the June 1962 cartoon was here

September 1962

October 1962

May 1963

For a retrospective self-congratulatory 25th anniversary celebration in January 1974

The Little World of Harvey Kurtzman

Here's an article from the December 1957 Playboy. I guess publisher Hugh Hefner felt bad about giving Harvey Kurtzman carte blanche to do the magazine of his dreams only to pull the rug out from him after two issues. The article tells a bit about him and his group of creators.

The painting by Bill Elder on this first page was intended for a never-published third issue of Trump.

I almost never post text-only pieces but I'll make an exception here since it's a profile of Kurtzman. It's taken from a computer file so I can't rescan it. Hopefully you're able to read the print.

Wallace Wood

Arnold Roth and Ed Fisher in Trump

Next two pages, also in Trump, by Jack Davis

To round things out, here's a one-pager by Howard Schneider.

And a double page spread of an old joke illustrated by Al Stine

Sick #91, 3 of 3

This is the last of Sick #91 from July 1972. Here are the first two parts.

Sick often printed excerpts from “Jack Davis' unsold newspaper strip Bo Rearguard, which I've posted samples of in the past. I'm not very happy the strip roots for the South, but an excuse to have anything by Jack Davis is fine with me.

Jack Sparling

Since they didn't have the budget to have artists for movie and TV parodies like other magazines, or if a movie was already a comedy, they would usually have a “review”, like this one of The Hot Rock. (They also didn't have to come up with puns on names)

Even though the back cover was a collage, it's still signed by artist Arnoldo Franchioni.