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Playboy's Gahan Wilson
Employs a world of monsters, alien creatures, and macabre human beings to satirize medicine, business, law, and human behavior
64 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1973
26 people want to read
About the author
Gahan Wilson
283 books49 followersGahan Wilson was an American author, cartoonist and illustrator known for his cartoons depicting horror-fantasy situations.
Wilson's cartoons and illustrations are drawn in a playfully grotesque style, and have a dark humor that is often compared to the work of The New Yorker cartoonist and Addams Family creator Charles Addams. But while both men sometimes feature vampires, graveyards and other traditional horror elements in their work, Addams's cartoons tended to be more gothic, reserved and old-fashioned, while Wilson's work is more contemporary, gross, and confrontational, featuring atomic mutants, subway monsters, and serial killers. It could be argued that Addams's work was probably meant to be funny without a lot of satirical intent, while Wilson often has a very specific point to make.
His cartoons and prose fiction have appeared regularly in Playboy, Collier's Weekly, The New Yorker and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. For the last he also wrote some movie and book reviews. He has been a movie review columnist for The Twilight Zone Magazine and a book critic for Realms of Fantasy magazine.
His comic strip Nuts, which appeared in National Lampoon, was a reaction against what he saw as the saccharine view of childhood in strips like Peanuts. His hero The Kid sees the world as a dark, dangerous and unfair place, but just occasionally a fun one too.
Wilson also wrote and illustrated a short story for Harlan Ellison's anthology Again, Dangerous Visions. The "title" is a black blob, and the story is about an ominous black blob that appears on the page, growing at an alarming rate, until... He has contributed short stories to other publications as well; "M1" and "The Zombie Butler" both appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and were reprinted in Gahan Wilson's Cracked Cosmos.
Additionally, Gahan Wilson created a computer game titled Gahan Wilson's The Ultimate Haunted House, in conjunction with Byron Preiss. The goal is to collect 13 keys in 13 hours from the 13 rooms of a house, by interacting in various ways with characters (such as a two-headed monster, a mad scientist, and a vampiress), objects, and the house itself.
He received the World Fantasy Convention Award in 1981, and the National Cartoonist Society's Milton Caniff Lifetime Achievement Award in 2005.
Gahan Wilson is the subject of a feature length documentary film, Gahan Wilson: Born Dead, Still Weird, directed by Steven-Charles Jaffe.
Wilson's cartoons and illustrations are drawn in a playfully grotesque style, and have a dark humor that is often compared to the work of The New Yorker cartoonist and Addams Family creator Charles Addams. But while both men sometimes feature vampires, graveyards and other traditional horror elements in their work, Addams's cartoons tended to be more gothic, reserved and old-fashioned, while Wilson's work is more contemporary, gross, and confrontational, featuring atomic mutants, subway monsters, and serial killers. It could be argued that Addams's work was probably meant to be funny without a lot of satirical intent, while Wilson often has a very specific point to make.
His cartoons and prose fiction have appeared regularly in Playboy, Collier's Weekly, The New Yorker and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. For the last he also wrote some movie and book reviews. He has been a movie review columnist for The Twilight Zone Magazine and a book critic for Realms of Fantasy magazine.
His comic strip Nuts, which appeared in National Lampoon, was a reaction against what he saw as the saccharine view of childhood in strips like Peanuts. His hero The Kid sees the world as a dark, dangerous and unfair place, but just occasionally a fun one too.
Wilson also wrote and illustrated a short story for Harlan Ellison's anthology Again, Dangerous Visions. The "title" is a black blob, and the story is about an ominous black blob that appears on the page, growing at an alarming rate, until... He has contributed short stories to other publications as well; "M1" and "The Zombie Butler" both appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and were reprinted in Gahan Wilson's Cracked Cosmos.
Additionally, Gahan Wilson created a computer game titled Gahan Wilson's The Ultimate Haunted House, in conjunction with Byron Preiss. The goal is to collect 13 keys in 13 hours from the 13 rooms of a house, by interacting in various ways with characters (such as a two-headed monster, a mad scientist, and a vampiress), objects, and the house itself.
He received the World Fantasy Convention Award in 1981, and the National Cartoonist Society's Milton Caniff Lifetime Achievement Award in 2005.
Gahan Wilson is the subject of a feature length documentary film, Gahan Wilson: Born Dead, Still Weird, directed by Steven-Charles Jaffe.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
March 14, 2016
A collection of cartoons Wilson placed in Playboy. I think he did cartoons for them for over fifty years. Also for The New Yorker, and others, of course. In case you are wondering if they might be pornographic or something, no, that's not what he is about. He's not against offending, or being sexually explicit, but that's not his primary interest. Wilson got into cartooning because he hated Disney's saccharine style and approach. His approach is deliberately macabre, grotesque, sardonic, edgy, featuring grossly featured or caricatured people and strange monsters, inventions of the imagination, in order to make some kind of relatively benign commentary on "the human condition." The captions are usually worth a wry smile. Artistically and imaginatively they are amazing, though. Sort of in the horror humor tradition.
Here's a page so you can his style:
http://www.gahanwilson.net/index.php
Here's a page so you can his style:
http://www.gahanwilson.net/index.php
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March 19, 2022Need to know value of my book so I can sell it.
PLAYBOY'S, 1973, 1st edition, I think I won, GAHAN WILSON. Slightly used condition.
PLAYBOY'S, 1973, 1st edition, I think I won, GAHAN WILSON. Slightly used condition.
August 26, 2012
I wasn't sure how to classify this collection of Gahan Wilson's cartoons, so I created a miscellaneous shelf. The man had a wicked sense of humor, and it shows in his odd drawings. I particularly like his series on cautionary calisthenics. Number three shows a man all tangled upside down and says to proceed cautiously in the practice of yoga, as mistakes are hard to undo.
If you can find this older Playboy collection, buy it for the smiles you'll get from the weird, yet funny, drawings.
If you can find this older Playboy collection, buy it for the smiles you'll get from the weird, yet funny, drawings.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews