I’ve grown up reading Mad, and a big part of the reason is the talent of the artists (another big reason is the talent of the writers, who are, I think, less recognized and less appreciated, in part because their signature style isbn’t so obvious. You can probably name half a dozen Mad artists, but I’ll bet you can’t name a half a dozen non-artist Mad writers)
There’s no way these guys could make a living off their work for Mad alone, but I have seen very little of their stuff outside the magazine. Here’s what I’ve seen:
Paul Coker – probably the biggest presence outside Mad. I’ve seen his stuff on greeting cards and advertisements. It’s hard to miss his “uneven-width ink pen lines” style.
Jack Davis – He doesn’t do it so much any more, but he used to do trading cards (those non-sports things that came six to a pack, with a stick of stale bubble gum) when I was a kid. Mostly Joke ones and monster ones and fake book covers. he also did some movie posters (The Russians are Coming, the Russians are Coming!) Also, see below.
Mort Drucker – their star caricaturist, who does the best movie parodies. The only other place I’ve seen his stuff is the movie poster for American Grafitti, and in one of the theatrical trailers for the film (he did fake yearbook pictures). George Lucas is a big fan of his.
Don Martin – I’ve seen reproductions of some weird early stuff he did, like record album covers, and, of course, he went to Cracked magazine after he broke with Mad (and did a solo magazine of his own for one issue), but the only non-Mad and non-humor-magazine stuff I’ve seen directly was a series of airline ads for magazines.
George Woodbridge – I think he’s REALLY underappreciated (and he died a couple of years ago, to almost no fanfare), but he’s the guy who drew, for instance, “43 Man Squamish”. I was astonished to find his work at – The Museum of American Heritage in Lexington, Massacghusetts. He did a lot of non-humor illustrations of Colonial military garb. I knew that he was a stickler for accurate histiorical clothing 9look back over his stuff. Even for a light humor piece, the clthing is meticuliysly researched and, AFAICT, accurate.
Al Jaffee has been tapped recently to contribute “Fold-ins” to car advertising, as he does for the back cover of Mad.
There’s been a long association between Mad and Playboy, but surprising little crossover. Harvey Kurtzman, of course, was a big one. He was a founding Madman, whop switched to Hef’s stable to try his own humor magazine, and to co-create Little Annie Fanny. But I didn’t think of him as being responsible for “my” Mad – he’d worked on it before it became a magazine, instead of a comic book – until he rejoined in the late 1980s. I saw a couple of Jack Davis comics in old 1960s Playboys. The only other Mad artist I’ve seen there is Caldwell, who seems to publish with regularity in both, the only one I know who does. n fact, he also published in the now-gone National Lampoon, the only artist I know who’s appearefd in both NL and Mad.
That’s it. Anyone know of any others? Or what these Mad artists did/do the rest of the time to support themselves
