OOT - GREET

Seeing Mad Magazine mentioned in a recent comment, I was inspired to post a tribute to the great Don Martin's greatest work. National Gorilla Suit Day is recognized world-wide as a masterpiece of Absurdism. In 1963 it was awarded the Prix Fixe at the yearly Biennale Absurdiste in Cantes.

KLEM TV

linky

I was big fan as a kid. I'd never seen the animation(s). Their faces are sometimes described as "bird-faced." But I always thought they were rat-faced.

Love the "rat giggles."

NYT: Soul of Mad Magazine, Al Feldstein Dies at 88

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.