Talk:Goodman Beaver

Did "Goodman Goes Playboy" really lead to Little Annie Fanny?
I would like to get to the bottom of the question of whether or not Harvey Kurtzman's "Goodman Goes Playboy" really lead to his creation of Little Annie Fanny, as this article asserts. I'm not sure we can really say that. From Denis Kitchen, one of the only sources on Kurtzman I currently have (ref here), we know "Goodman Goes Playboy" certainly was created "well before" Hefner agreed to do Annie. We can deduce that Hefner read it mere days after that (Kitchen says Hefner green-lit "Annie "the day after Christmas" 1961; Hefner would not have seen the Goodman comic until the following month, allowing for it to appear on newsstands a month before its publish date of February 1962). Even if Hefner somehow saw his friend's comic a few days before he told him he would publish Annie, the two had been in discussions for years leading up to those crucial days closing 1961/opening 1962. Unless we have a source otherwise, I believe the Goodman comic and the creation of Annie are two separate things, one really having nothing to do with the other. Prhartcom (talk) 18:54, 26 December 2014 (UTC)
 * I think you're misreading. It wasn't "Goodman Goes Playboy" that got Kurtzman the job at Playboy—he'd been negotiating with Hefner since 1960 (see the "Publication" section) to have Goodman Beaver as a regular feature in Playboy.  The fact that Hefner thought "Goodman Goes Playboy" was funny is incidental. Curly Turkey ¡gobble! 22:31, 26 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Okay, good. Then let's take out the two words "led to" that I have an issue with. (Meanwhile, the Little Annie Fanny article that I am focusing on says this too, and I will fix this same problem there.) Prhartcom (talk) 23:51, 26 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Argh—that was stupid. Now fixed. Curly Turkey ¡gobble! 00:03, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

Well, here's more information on this question that I only just this moment read. Nine years after writing the source I mention above, and after reminding us that "Goodman Goes Playboy" appeared in late 1961, Kitchen & Buhle in 2009's The Mad Genius of Comics state, "Hefner, the actual target of the satire, loved the piece, and his subsequent correspondence with Kurtzman led to Goodman's 'sex change' and the 1962 debut of Little Annie Fannie in Playboy" (emphasis mine). Dang. And they even say it "led to" Annie. Now it looks like I have to allocate space in the article to discuss "Goodman Goes Playboy" and write words saying that it was influential in the creation of the strip. Prhartcom (talk) 22:41, 2 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Hmmm ... I think it's a bit ambiguous, though. The correspondence had commenced before "Goes Playboy", and it says the correspondence led to the sex change, but it doesn't explicitly say that "Goes Playboy" led to the correspondence, just that the correspondence that led to the sex change idea happened subsequent to Hefner's having seen the strip.  I mean, if you read the Goodman Beaver strips, there's nothing new in "Goes Playboy" that I can see influencing the idea of the sex change.  I do think it's highly probable Hefner saw the strip long before publication, though—after all, Kurtzman was trying to sell it to him. Curly Turkey ¡gobble! 22:59, 2 January 2015 (UTC)
 * That a good observation; I see what you mean. Hmm. Well, I'll think about it. Maybe I should mention the piece anyway. I can just see some editor complaining that it wasn't mentioned. Prhartcom (talk) 23:27, 2 January 2015 (UTC)
 * You could word it something like "Following the publication at the end of 1961 of the last Goodman Beaver story, "Goodman Goes Playboy", Kurtzman and Hefner reached an agreement to blah blah blah". Curly Turkey ¡gobble! 00:00, 3 January 2015 (UTC)

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