Harvey Kurtzman has a powerful talent for directness in his drawings. He makes strong definite statements with very few details.
His continuity is equally direct and clear.

He is creative in the old sense of the word - meaning full of inventiveness and ideas.
He can even make crowds clear and easy to read.


He gets a lot of gags into a single assignment- all these last crowds are from one masterful illustration!


http://comicrazys.com/2010/05/15/the-missing-art-of-harvey-kurtzman-varstiy-magazine-spreads-harvey-kurtzman/

Sorry, if you are getting bored with these, but I am collecting them for my own reference...
The sheer beauty of the logic and clarity of them fascinates me.








If you do wanna see more, here's where I am stealing most of them from:


http://www.ecrater.com/product.php?pid=4789271

And here's some more thanks to Smax!
http://indubeed.blogspot.com/2010/03/blog-post.html

I would consider this logical and fairly happy layout for kids' stories.
The only fault I can find is that some of the pages are dominated by text - and kids want art. They look at all the pictures first, and then go back when they're finished and bored (or home sick) and maybe read some of the text.
These are more like it. Big pictures and just enough text to tell you some interesting info about the pictures.
These still follow the logical hierarchy of almost all picture/text media from ancient times. They're just laid out in a fun way. With very slight diagonal panels and not completely mechanical boxes - but it's not so wacky or wonky that you can't tell what you are looking at. Everything is completely clear.
I'd read all those headings right away, but how many kids are gonna get in and read the fine print? I guess some of that is for the Moms-who probably also don't read it.
These came from Barbie's wonderful site full of Golden Books and other kid treats.

http://goldengems.blogspot.com/

as a couple people have pointed out in the last post, and that's true. There is an opposite type of layout thinking too