ICv2 has learned that Dark Horse will publish a volume including both issues of Trump magazine along with all sorts of supplementary material involving the production of the magazine, much of which has never been published before.  Edited by Harvey Kurtzman and published by Hugh Hefner for just two issues in 1957, Trump was a glossy humor magazine that sold for fifty cents, which was a premium price for a humor book in that era.  In spite of the high cover cost Trump reportedly sold well for a new magazine, but unfortunately it came out at the same time that Hefner’s Playboy-based empire was hit with a cash crunch that caused him to cut back on his non-Playboy publishing endeavors, which meant that Trump was trumped before it had a chance to establish itself in the market.

Trump was Harvey Kurtzman’s first project after splitting with Bill Gaines and leaving Mad Magazine in 1956 in a pay dispute.  Jack Davis and Will Elder both decided to leave Mad and follow Kurtzman to Trump where their work appeared prominently along with contributions from other Mad alumni such as Al Jaffee and freelancer Arnold Roth. 

After the premature demise of Trump Kurtzman went on to edit the short-lived black-and-white Humbug magazine, which died with issue #11 largely because of poor distribution and then, from 1960-1965, the chronically under-funded, but enormously influential Help! for Warren, but he never again had the chance to one-up his stint on Mad Magazine that Trump would have provided had circumstances been different.