Title: Playboy's Little Annie Fanny Vol 1 (1962-1970) and Vol 2 (1970-1988) Author: Harvey Kurtzman and Will Elder Publisher: Dark Horse Publish Date: Vol 1 2000, Vol 2 2001 Genres:: Graphic Novels, Fiction Reviewer: SexHerald Staff

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If you are looking to find out what white middle class American males that read Playboy were thinking about from the years 1962 to 1988 you might want to pick up Playboy’s Little Annie Fanny Collection, Volumes 1 and 2, written by Harvey Kurtzman and Will Elder.

The cartoon strip, which appeared in Playboy Magazine during those years, is centered on the adventures of the strips main character, Little Annie Fanny. Ms. Fanny is a combination of Little Orphan Annie and Li’l Abner Yokum in a very full figured blond headed body and the plots of each edition are based around the situations she bounces her way into, all the while keeping an optimistic outlook on life.

The situations she moves from are a pop culture’s slice of 1960s to 1980s American history. She finds herself dealing with a renegade pilot going to bomb the Soviet Union, being felt up by one of Howard Hughes-like character’s people, landing on a Woody Allen based character’s casting couch, and getting a frontal massage from an aggressive body builder named Ernest Schpritzwasser.

Kurtzman and Elder place Ms. Fanny in a variety of settings that make up the plot. Often finding herself in situations where she is bound to disrobe, Ms. Fanny has gone to a doctor’s office, where there is a struggle amongst doctors to examine her, an office Christmas party, countless others parties, and has been stranded on a deserted island, all events that lead to…

Ms. Fanny’s breasts exposed. Despite the variety of subjects that are dealt with over the twenty five years, there is one thing that remains constant – the blonde’s big breasts. In the first strip they stayed in her tight top, but after that they pop out in almost every other episode. Either her top is pulled off, taken off, lost or never on in the first place, and though Ms. Fanny never is seen having sex, she is fondled, sometimes against her will, regularly.

Most of the earlier stories of Volume 1 are witty and funny satires that provide the reader of the new millenium with a capsule of the politics, events, morals and issues of the times. However, as time passes, with most works of humor, the strip begins to run thin on material to the point where many of the later adventures of Ms. Fanny’s are read with more pain than pleasure.

Both volumes of the collection contain a milieu of interesting facts about the strip. Volume 1 contains dialogue between Hugh Heffner, Playboy’s publisher, and Kurtzman, as they discuss ways for Kurtzman to submit usable material to Playboy. Kurtzman, one of the founders of Mad Magazine, goes through a depression and his material is not funny. Disheartened, he writes to Heffner that he is giving up. Heffner, who had already bank rolled him with $100,000 on a failed project, responds with encouragement and states that his emotional state of mind is affecting his sense of humor. From there, Little Annie Fanny was born.

The back pages also contain a strip by strip index to help explain to readers, especially the readers not of that generation, some of the hidden humor and characters references placed into the strips by the authors.

There are a number of reoccurring characters such as Sugar Daddy Big Bucks, who is, of course, the symbol of American capitalism that Daddy Warbucks was to Orphan Annie, her roommate Ruthie who serves as moral guidance for Ms. Fanny, her often naked and almost as unwieldy breasted buddy Wanda who serves immoral guidance to her friend, and her agent Solly Brass, who is based on the actor Phil Shivers of “Sergeant Bilko” fame, to name a few.

In the tradition of Mad Magazine, there are plenty of spoofed situations and famous people that lead to many funny cartoons and entertaining reading; and like Mad Magazine, even Little Annie Fanny’s antics cannot entertain forever and now are best served as an example of the times that they were.