TV Guide – Greg Goldstein's Comic Art Gallery

Al Hirschfeld — Back In Time

January 8, 2025 Greg Goldstein Original Art and The Artists

TV Guide Illustration, October 29, 1966

Where are we going this time?
Is this the fifties?
Or nineteen ninety-nine? *

Irwin Allen’s Time Tunnel (1966) was one of my favorite shows as a little kid. I was crestfallen that it A) only lasted one season and B) because of its short length, it was rarely available in syndicated reruns after the fact.

When It landed on DVD about 40 years later, I purchased it immediately and watched it with my young kids. They liked it too. James Darren and Robert Colbert lost in time, desperately trying to return to present day? What’s not to like.

And I’ve always wanted piece of art by the legendary caricaturist Al Hirschfeld. And the piece… or the price… never seemed to be quite right.

So, when the opportunity presented itself to own this original Hirschfeld Time Tunnel illustration from TV Guide, I had to push the button.

And despite Cleveland Amory’s bitchy review of the series from the TV Guide article, It was definitely well produced (The pilot/first episode looks amazing). Sadly, It did occasionally suffer from some half-baked scripts and cheesy aliens that crept into the show in the latter half of the run.

But… It employs a high concept that would come into play many times in future fiction, including Stephen Kings 1963:

When you try to change time, time fights back.

More about Time Tunnel can be found here.

*Back in Time,1985

Songwriters: Huey Lewis / John Victor Colla / Christopher John Hayes / Sean Thomas Hopper

Back in Time lyrics © Wb Music Corp., Huey Lewis Music, Cause And Effect Music, Kinda Blue Music, Bedaah Music, Pw 3 Ascap Songs

***Cool cover on this issue Of TV Guide. Green Hornet, which I also adored, didn’t make it past one season either. Sigh.***

Jack Davis — On The Campaign Trail

February 4, 2020 Greg Goldstein Original Art and The Artists

Mad #170, October 1974

The Iowa caucuses officially kicked off the 2020 national campaign season yesterday. (Although in the 21st century, it feels like every day, of every year, is campaign season. Sigh.)

Campaign season always makes me think of Jack Davis.

I loved his caricatures of famous politicians. Many of them — especially in the 70s— had plenty of personality, and Davis, like a great illustrator, could show you that personality through his art. And if they were bland, boring, run of the mill politicians, Davis could still manage to find something to say about them — truthful, of course –that would make you smile.

I also liked that Davis, who went from EC horror artist to one of America’s top commercial artists in less than 20 years, never became too successful for appearances in the pages of Mad magazine.

This strip is from a multi-page story called “Wishful Thinking.” It appears to be done on a single board, so in all likelihood all the gags in this story are single pieces of art cobbled together to create story pages. That said, many oversized Mad original art pages have been cut up over the years, to sell individual gags like this separately, so it’s difficult to be definitive.

But it’s not difficult to be definitive about this: In addition to being one of the great American commercial artists, Davis is also one of my personal favorites. Want to offer me an original piece of art for a TV Guide or Time Magazine cover?

I’m all ears.