num_pages: 1056
description: Gahan Wilson is among the most popular widely-read and beloved cartoonists in the history of the medium whose career spans the second half of the 20th century and all of the 21st. His work has been seen by millionsno hundreds of millionsin the pages of Playboy The New Yorker Punch The National Lampoon and many other magazines; there is no telling really how many readers he has corrupted or comforted. He is revered for his playfully sinister take on childhood adulthood men women and monsters. His brand of humor makes you laugh until you cry. And its about time that a collection of his cartoons was published that did justice to his vast body of work.When Gahan Wilson walked into Hugh Hefners office in 1957 he sat down as Hefner was on the phone gently rejecting a submission to his new gentlemens magazine: I think its very well-written and I liked it very much Hefner reportedly said but its anti-sin. And Im afraid were pro-sin. Wilson knew at that moment that he had found a kindred spirit and a potential home for his cartoons. And indeed he had; Wilson appeared in every issue of Playboy from the December 1957 issue to today. It has been one of the most fruitful successful and long-lived relationships between a contributor and a magazine ever.Gahan Wilson: 50 Years of Playboy Cartoons features not only every cartoon Wilson drew for Playboy but all his prose fiction that has appeared in that magazine as well from his first story in the June 1962 issue Horror Trio to such classics as Dracula Country (September 1978). It also includes the text-and-art features he drew for Playboy such as his look at Madame Tussauds Wax Museum his take on our countrys pathology of violence and his appreciation of transplant surgery.Wilsons notoriously black sense of comedy is on display throughout the book leaving no sacred cow unturned (an image curiously absent in the book) ridiculing everything from state sponsored executions to the sober precincts of the nouveau rich from teenage dating to police line-ups with scalding and hilarious satirical jabs. Although Wilson is known as an artist who relishes the creepy side of modern life this three-volume set truly demonstrates the depth and breadth of his rangefrom illustrating private angst we never knew we had (when you eat a steak just whom are you eating?) to the ironic and deadpan take on horrifying public issues (ecological disaster nuclear destruction anyone?).Gahan Wilson has been peeling back the troubling layers of modern life with his incongruously playful and unnerving cartoons assailing our deepest fears and our most inane follies. This three-volume set is a testament to one of the funniestand wickedly disturbingcartoonists alive.Nominated for two 2010 Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards (Best Archival Collection/Project: Strips; Best Publication Design).
language: English
title: Gahan Wilson: 50 Years of Playboy Cartoons
publisher: Fantagraphics Books