Mad Art : A Visual Celebration of the Art of Mad Magazine and the Idiots Who Create It [Paperback]

Mark Evanier (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 1, 2002

The year 2002 marks the 50th anniversary of MAD Magazine, America's longest-running periodical of humor and satire. Throughout its long history, one of the most immediate, defining, and influential aspects of MAD has been its unique art; the magazine is a treasury of illustrated humor. MAD Art is a hilarious look at five decades of America's premiere showcase for parody, satire, and wit. All of MAD's "Usual Gang of Idiots" are represented, beginning with Harvey Kurtzman and Will Elder and continuing on through more recent Idiots like Richard Williams and Hermann Mejia. MAD fans will find fascinating one-on-one discussions with veteran MAD artists about their favorite pieces, stylistic influences, and the references they used in creating their art. Also included are quotes from artists about each other's work, like Sam Viviano's comments on Mort Drucker, Tom Bunk's conversation about Basil Wolverton, and many more. MAD's writers are essential to its success-and readers will discover captivating personal interviews with the writers who helped create the side-splitting text accompanying the illustrations. There is also a section on the talented writer/artists, such as Al Jaffee, John Caldwell, and Sergio AragonŽs, who write as well as illustrate their own material. Finally, this authorized guide through MAD history includes a treasury of MAD's infamous advertising parodies; samples of classic cover and interior art; and dozens of rare and never-before-seen preliminary sketches, photos, and much more. The quintessential reference for every devoted MAD fanatic!

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

About the shape and weight of a telephone directory, this book has room enough to live up to its subtitle-and more. It begins with legendary cartoonist Harvey Kurtzman and his creation of Mad as a humor comic book in 1952 and continues to the present, artist by artist. Early artists tend to get more space because they helped create the magazine's style and also because some of them have continued to contribute drawings for decades. Jack Davis and Mort Drucker, for example, are each allotted eight pages, enough for an irreverent but affectionate biographical write-up and a variety of art samples. Lesser, later artists get a paragraph and one panel. Along the way, Evanier gives a lot of background information about the comics industry and about the process by which Mad has been produced. In short, this is a book for people who are curious about individual artists, the history of Mad magazine or comics as a business. Mad's success for half a century shows it has mastered the knack of laughing with its targets while laughing at them. Indeed, many of the celebrities the magazine has skewered over the years have felt flattered to find themselves the subjects of Mad caricatures. It helps that so much of the magazine focuses on relatively nonthreatening subjects, such as popular culture and suburbia. The only political commentary cutting enough to draw blood is on Ronald Reagan. But clearly the Mad staff knows what it's doing and has been doing it extremely well.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Mad magazine has been corrupting young minds, in a good way, for half a century. As befits the institution it has become, it receives the coffee-table-book treatment with comics historian Evanier's showcase of the artists who have been Mad mainstays over the years. Evanier profiles the unusual members of "the usual gang of idiots" (as the masthead has long called them), of whom the most prominent include cartoonists Jack Davis and Will Elder, with Mad from the beginning; such second-generation stars as master caricaturist Mort Drucker and "Mad's maddest artist," Don Martin, whose baggy-faced as well as -pantsed style virtually defined Mad during its heyday; and talented relative newcomers Drew Friedman and Peter Kuper. Each profile accompanies well-chosen samplings of the artist's work, and Evanier continues his sprightly, informative commentary in additional chapters on Mad's early days, the gestation of a Mad feature, and other matters. A nostalgic treat for boomers as well as a revealing look at Mad today. Gordon Flagg
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: Watson-Guptill (November 1, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0823030806
• ISBN-13: 978-0823030804
• Product Dimensions: 10.5 x 8.3 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #338,277 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A celebration of the artists who made MAD what it was (is), December 26, 2003

By 

Lawrance M. Bernabo (The Zenith City, Duluth, Minnesota) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Mad Art : A Visual Celebration of the Art of Mad Magazine and the Idiots Who Create It (Paperback)

The title of "MAD Art" is a nice, simple title, achieving a sense of balance by consisting of a pair of three letter words, but it is a bit off target. Even when you through in the subtitle--"A Visual Celebration of the Art of 'MAD' Magazine and the Idiots Who Create It"--we are still off the beam a bit, because what Mark Evanier has compiled here is a tribute to the specific artists who made "MAD" magazine the cultural icon it has been ever since I was a kid (and a little bit earlier than that as well). Evanier, a former assistant to the legendary Jack Kirby has written comic books (including "Groo the Wanderer" with "MAD" artist Sergio Aragones) as well as becoming a historian on the subject of cartooning, so there is a sense of scholarship to this effort. Those who comes to this rather thick trade paperback with expectations of reading some choice movie parodies and other familiar "MAD" pieces are going to be disappointed, because this is not that type of "MAD" collection.

Evanier uses a double chronology for "MAD Art," with the chapters detailing the general process by which artists join the "MAD" gang of idiots and end up producing their mini-comic masterpieces in discrete stages, while each chapter provides profiles of over five dozen artists with examples of their work, from the infamous advertising parodies, and classic front (and black) covers to the interior art, including dozens of rare and previously unseen preliminary sketches and photographs. That means the first chapter, representing the fabled time when "MAD" was a E.C. comic book, looks at the legendary artist Harvey Kurtzman, Jack Davis, Will Elder, John Severin, and Wallace Wood. There is certainly something to be said for any list of artists that end up with Wally Wood being on the bottom. Kurtzman gets special credit for being the writer-editor and occasional artist for the all 23 of the comic book issues and the first five of "MAD" as a magazine, while Davis is the premier caricature artist of our time.

With each chapter revealing another wave of fan favorites, you get a sense for how the "MAD" stable of artists was created. The second stage sees Dave Berg, Bob Clarke, Mort Drucker, Frank Kelly Freas, Don Martin, and Norman Mingo being added to the ranks, while chapter three looks at Sergio Aragones, Paul Coker Jr., Harry North, Antonio Prohias, Jack Rickard, and Angelo Torres. These are the artists that defined "MAD" when I was a mere lad, and even if you do not recognize the name, you will recognize the artwork (I actually made it almost all the way to 2004 before I realized that Antonio Prohias did all the Spy vs. Spy bits when I was a kid).

However, after that point we are up to the next generation of "MAD" artists, which means those who have been working on the magazine since I moved on up to "The National Lampoon" and then abandoned written satire for weekly doses of "Saturday Night Live." So Tom Bunk, John Caldwell, Don "Duck" Edwing, Sam Viviano, Drew Friedman, and Roberto Parada were all news to me. But, to be fair, how many people have actually been reading "MAD" magazine for a half-century? If the younger generation gets introduced to Harvey Kurtzman, then that justifies this entire 304-page book with its black-and-white illustrations and two 16-page color sections. As for me, my favorite of the "new" artists is Richard Williams, with his updating of Norman Rockwell for the 90's (The cast of the first "Survivor" doing the Thanksgiving dinner "Freedom From Want" bit).

For those who are interested in finding out about the favorite pieces, stylistic influence, and references the veteran "MAD" contributors used to create their art, "MAD Art" is going to be a treat. If it tries the patience, not to mention the memory, of those who have no clue who "Flesh Garden" and the "Lone Stranger" are parodies of, then that is their problem. It is about time somebody took the artists of "MAD" magazine seriously.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars You'll laugh out loud as you relive your youth!, June 16, 2003

By 

Blaine Greenfield "eclectic reader" (Belle Meade, NJ) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Mad Art : A Visual Celebration of the Art of Mad Magazine and the Idiots Who Create It (Paperback)

If the names Dave Berg, Don Martin and Al Jaffee mean anything
to you, then you'll want to read MAD ART by Harvey
Kurtzman . . . I loved it, but then again, I rarely missed an
issue of MAD when I was a kid . . . and I can still "see" (in
my mind) the drawings of Berg, Martin and Jaffee, along with
the rest of the "Usual Gang of Idiots," to quote the magazine's
masthead.

MAD ART features interviews with many of MAD's veteran
contributors about their favorite pieces, as well as what influenced
them in their work . . . but best of all, this official guides through
MAD history also includes a treasury of advertising parodies,
classic front and back covers, and interior art . . . I found
myself laughing out loud, reliving what gave me joy when
I was younger . . . and thinking that someday soon, as a
guilty pleasure, I'm going to have to break down and purchase
a current copy to see if it is still as funny as I remembered.

Obviously, it is difficult to try to present art in this text-based
newsletter, but I'll try by describing just a few of the hilarious
illustrations:

In one Don Martin strip, written by Duck Edwing, a guy sees a
sign that says "Pay Toll Fifty Feet" . . . he pulls up and as the
collector puts his hand out, he reaches back in his trunk and gives
him fifty feet!

"Footnotes to History," illustrated by Paul Coker, Jr. and written
by Paul Peter Porgest, has illustrations featuring just feet with
such lines as:
"Adolph . . . can't you walk like the other boys?"
"One of these days, David, you're going to hurt somebody with
that slingshot."
"Would you mind very much using a drop cloth, Michelangelo?"
"Orville! Wilbur! Come down here this instant!"

And "Your pet has reached blissful retirement when," illustrated
and written by Paul Peter Porges, shows:
your parrot making special menu requests (and some lukewarm
milk);
your doborman giving limp handshakes;
your piranha losing its bite; and
your parakeet having to walk up its perch.

I now find myself looking forward to a follow-up book, featuring
interviews with the magazine's great writers and their classic pieces.

6 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars The Tepid Mad, July 4, 2003

By 

n0s4a2 (Burbank, CA United States) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Mad Art : A Visual Celebration of the Art of Mad Magazine and the Idiots Who Create It (Paperback)

Everyone has nostalgic affection for what Mad once was, and the art generated for it in its heyday has been endlessly recycled. The selections for this book are nice, but the reproductions are tiny. There are relatively few of the gorgeous full color paintings that graced its pages in the '50s and '60s, and no roughs or preliminary sketches to give any insight into the process.

The writing is perky and lightweight, like a testamonial speech for a retiring employee, with a little biographical information on each artist, where he was schooled, what a gifted cartoonist, how respected by his peers, what a funny guy, etc. Here and there are hints at the pressures that must have come into play in the production of the magazine, but propriety and niceness always win out, and the real story is glossed over with well-worn Madisms like, "...mainly because...!" and other breezy, hand-me-down catchphrases. With no glimpse into the creative life behind the vacant gaze of Alfred E. Neuman, you might as well buy a Mad reprint from the days when it used to parody superficial fluff like this book.

The only interesting thing about "Mad Art" is its inclusion of the newer artists who have appeared since most of us stopped reading the magazine. These newcomers are technically rather good (if unoriginal), and it's important to see what's being done today, even though Mad hasn't been funny for a decade and a half.