Al Feldstein, who took over a fledgling humor magazine called Mad in 1956 and made it a popular, profitable and enduring wellspring of American satire, died on Tuesday at his ranch in Paradise Valley, Mont...
The founding editor, Harvey Kurtzman, established its well-informed irreverence, but Mr. Feldstein gave Mad its identity as a smart-alecky, sniggering and indisputably clever spitball-shooter of a publication with a scattershot look, dominated by gifted cartoonists of wildly differing styles.
He hired many of the writers and artists whose work became Mad trademarks. Among them were Don Martin, whose cartoons featuring bizarre human figures and distinctive sound effects — Katoong! Sklortch! Zazik! — immortalized the eccentric and the screwy; Antonio Prohias, whose “Spy vs. Spy” was a sendup of the international politics of the Cold War; Dave Berg, whose “The Lighter Side of ...” made gentle, arch fun of middlebrow behavior; Mort Drucker, whose caricatures satirized movies like Woody Allen’s “Hannah and Her Sisters” (“Henna and Her Sickos” in Mad’s retelling); and George Woodbridge, who illustrated a Mad signature article, written by Tom Koch: a prescient 1965 satire of college sports, criticizing their elitism and advocating the creation of a game that could be played by everyone. It was called 43-Man Squamish, “played on a five-sided field called a Flutney.” Position players, each equipped with a hooked stick called a frullip, included deep brooders, inside and outside grouches, overblats, underblats, quarter-frummerts, half-frummerts a full-frummert and a dummy. (read more)
This was my favorite magazine, back in the early 80's, around the time I had learned to read English. Massachusetts, we had a girl staying with us, extended stay, good looking girl, and there was a guy coming over courting her. He brought the magazine one day and I made him my best friend. Some of the humor went over my head sometimes. But the humor I did understand more than made up for the humor I did not. I just loved Mad Magazine.
17 comments:
What wise ass teenager, including me, didn't love Mad Magazine?
Neuman!
I loved Mad Mag when I was in high school. Loved it.
That "Viva La Stupidity" with Alfred E. Neuman in a Che hat is priceless!
The left love mass-murdering thugs when the mass murdering is done in the name of communism.
@April
Yeah, but Alfred E. Neuman ridicules that in such a happy, exuberant fashion.
As the defamation/denunciation purge picks up steam, I think it's best to remember that that is a highly effective tactic.
Joyce Carol Oates on the defamation/denunciation mob hysteria that has taken hold of us:
Tragic pessimist George Orwell could not have foreseen that individuals would give up their freedom to be punitive Big Brother themselves.
ST - Agreed. The left should be mocked for their adoration of murderous thugs, and I do enjoy that MAD joined in.
Sadly, the times passed by Mad Magazine back in the 1980s. I remember seeing publisher Bill Gaines on a segment of 60 Minutes back at that time. Gaines was lamenting the fact that it was impossible to satarize the likes of Jim and Tammy Far Bakker. "They've got an air conditioned dog house! How do you exaggerate that?", or some similar lament.
I had a Mad from around the time some of the Watergate tapes were released, sometime in 1976 I think. They did an updated version of Poor Richard's Almanac, with side by side comparisons of Ben Franklin sayings and appropriate Tricky Dick Nixon quotes. I have not been able to find it online. One comparison went something like this:
Ben Franklin: "Little strokes fell great oaks."
Tricky Dick (paraphrased as best I can from memory): "It's the little people that are going to bring us down: the secretaries, the stenographers. They're going to screw us in the end!"
Man, I wish I could find that!
Another bit of Mad trivia. It's been reported that Bobby Fischer and Barbra Streisand used to swap issues while both attended Erasmus High School.
My all-time fave MAD cartoon was Al Jaffees' "Wretching Jackal"--an instant classic! That drawing of a standing Jackal cramped, leaning on a tree for support while wretching its guts out over societies ills is forever indelibly burned in my retinas & brain! And the phrase "sickening enough to make even a jackal wretch!" became thereafter a fixed part of the popular lexicon.
I like that he retired to Montana to paint. Nice finish.
The real Newspaper of Record for the Baby Boomers.
I was pretty much obsessed with the caricatures of sexy women by guys like Mort Drucker.
"Mad" gave sanity and humor.
R.I.P., Feldstein
And thanks to all the bloggers who helped me see that it wasn't all just Bill Gaines' doing.
The Nat. Lampoon High School yearbook is piss your pants funny.
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