The Little Annie Fanny cartoon strip, written and created by Mad magazine editor and cofounder Harvey Kurtzman, was a Playboy staple from 1962 to 1988. "The Surfers" was illustrated by Will Elder, Frank Frazetta, and Jack Davis, and ran in the July 1965 issue. Some history of the strip from the frazettagirls.com website:

"In order to secure the job, Frazetta had to try out for Kurtzman & Elder to prove his style was compatible with theirs. Both Kurtzman and Elder were familiar with Frazetta's artwork so the 'audition' was mostly for [Playboy owner and publisher] Hugh Hefner, who at the time, wasn't familiar with Frazetta's artwork. Frazetta, of course, pulled through. Soon after approval, Elder, Kurtzman, Davis, Al Jaffee, Arnold Roth and Frazetta got to work. Elder recalled renting a suite at the Algonquin Hotel in New York. He turned every light on and ordered large amounts of food and coffee. Together, they set up an assembly line type of arrangement: some of the guys were doing backgrounds, some were doing other details. They were all following Harvey's layouts. Harvey, a known perfectionist, was the last to make changes. He would review the work, make marks and send it back to the assembly line for improvements.

"Although the synergy of the group of artists was incredible, Frazetta's time working for the strip was short-lived. The story goes Hefner ended up changing his mind and not liking the changes Frazetta made on Annie's body. Supposedly, Hefner told Kurtzman and Elder not to use Frazetta for future projects. In the early 2000s, however, Elder said the problem was never Hefner. In fact, Hefner always respected and admired Frazetta's artwork and never minded those changes on Annie Fanny. Elder and Kurtzman were the ones who didn't want to continue working with Frazetta. According to Elder, they worked completely differently from Frazetta. No surprise here, Frazetta was finishing his parts of the strip at the very last minute and left the other artists stressing and having to work around his schedule. Frazetta's procrastinating nature ended up leaving Elder and Kurtzman no time to make corrections. Elder said, 'We loved Frank and we didn't have the heart to fire him, so we put the blame on Hef'."

"THE SURFERS," LITTLE ANNIE FANNY CARTOON, PLAYBOY (1965)

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