Dave Berg loved to draw his friends, neighbors and colleagues into his Mad Magazine “Lighter Side” series. On this great strip, Mad Publisher William (Bill) Gaines and other staffers get the full Berg treatment. I love this.
Mad staffers here are —
Leftside, front to back:
Lenny Brenner, Tom Nozkowski, Charlie Kadau, Joe Raiola
Rightside, front to back:
Nick Meglin, John Ficarra, Sarah Friedman, Andrew Schwartzberg
(Thanks to my pals Joey Cavalieri and Charlie Kochman for filling in the names of folks I didn’t know.)
Left: Still one of my favorite biographies of all time. Right: A fun ad parody featuring the Mad gang further back in the day.
One punch line panel of the iconic Spy vs. Spy gag strip often sported more violence than an entire episode of Looney Tunes. (That’s saying something.)
And we loved it.
Prohias, a Cuban refugee, was a genius. He didn’t speak very much English. And he didn’t have to. Humor is a universal language.
And me personally? I love wordless gags. After all, cartooning is a visual medium.
Spy vs. Spy made its debut in a classic issue of Mad — the infamous election flip cover. Newsstand proprietors could face out whoever actually won the election. (Spoiler alert: It was JFK.) Also above are the first three Spy gags, all appearing in the same issue.
I was fortunate to visit Mad’s offices in 1976 and received the classic Cheap, Crummy Souvenir. More importantly, I met many of the “Usual Gang of Idiots” including the fearless leader himself, Bill Gaines.
When artists Mort Drucker and Angelo Torres were creating those amazing Mad movie parodies (especially the earlier ones) they often had trouble acquiring official photo references. The solution? Torres would sneak a camera into the movie theater and quietly snap some photos for himself or Drucker.
In other words, the Mad artists were the original film pirates.
You have no idea how much I love that.
This classic Drucker page from a parody of the film “The Hot Rock” comes with a personal anecdote as well:
I discovered my pal Stuart Ng had three original pages from this story for sale about six or seven years ago. I didn’t want all three, I only wanted one (they’re huge — about 18×24), but even if I did, we couldn’t agree on price. (Hot Rock is one of my favorite films, and it’s one of Stuart’s also, and besides, it’s not like Drucker pages are lying around.)
So of course, every so often, I would revisit the pages, and of course, following the rest of the original art market, the price would increase and I couldn’t bring myself to pull the trigger.
(Insert emoji of me slapping myself here.)
Finally… A few months ago, we had a meeting of the minds. He sold me one, and he knows it’s going into a good home. I paid more than I wanted to, he sold it for less than he wanted to, and that seemed like the making of a decent compromise.
And I think he still has the remaining two available, in case other Hot Rock fans see this post. Tell him Greg sent you.
Although somewhat forgotten today, The Hot Rock is a classic caper film, written by the legendary screenwriter William Goldman and based on the first book in the “Dortmunder” series by (the also legendary) Donald Westlake. Filmed on location in New York, including some neighborhoods I was personally familiar with, I’ve loved it since it was released 50 years ago.
The first(?) of endless Abbey Road swipes and homages is featured in Hot Rock promo art. I love that George Segal copied George Harrison’s outfit entirely, right down to the footwear. I will bet that somewhere in that photographer’s archive is an even more exact mirror of the Abbey Road cover.
Once upon a time, Mad Magazine was a users manual for anti-establishment thinking among the baby boomer generation. Think of it as an introductory guide to counter culture.
And my personal sweet spot for devouring each issue (around 1970-1976) coincides with its biggest circulation success — reaching sales of more than 2million copies per issue, and rivaling TV Guide and Reader’s Digest as an American magazine powerhouse.
In other words, a lot of kids got the joke.
The art styles of its stars — Mort Drucker, Sergio Aragones, Jack Davis, Dave Berg, et al — were instantly recognizable.
Including, of course, the legendary Al Jaffee. In an incredible 50-year span (1964-2013), only one issue of Mad doesn’t feature a gag from him. He actually holds the Guinness World Record as the comic artist with the longest career. Jaffe “retired” from cartooning just shy of turning 100-years old.
When the original art for this page appeared for sale a few years ago, I remembered the gag vividly. I can’t remember what I ate for lunch yesterday, but a 50-year old cartoon from Mad?
No problem.
Happy 70thanniversary, Mad.
Mad celebrates its 70th birthday this year, launching as a comic book in 1952, and changing formats to a magazine a few years later. The rest, as they say, is history...
Jack Davis and Stan Lee only worked together a handful of times. Jack drew six Rawhide Kid stories at the dawn of the “Marvel Age,” after Jack Kirby became too busy designing and developing Marvel’s earliest superheroes.
Davis’ cartoony style is unmistakable, and definitely a departure from the typical Marvel western art line-up that included Kirby, Dick Ayers and Larry Lieber, among others.
These Davis Western stories are some of the final color comic book stories to he ever drew. Shortly after their publication, Davis returned to Mad Magazine and became a Mad mainstay for more than 20 years.
And of course, we can’t forget the Time Magazine covers. The TV Guide covers. The film posters. The advertising work. Trading cards for Topps. Etc.
Just a few things to occupy the drawing board of one of America’s most talented and recognizable commercial illustrators.
Too bad Stan couldn’t persuade Davis for a bit more work. I’m not sure how it would have worked out on the traditional superhero stories * but a few short pieces for Not Brand Echh would have been right on the nose.
(*Well, actually I’m certain it would have been jarring to see Jack on “straight” superhero stories…)
2020 is the 60th anniversary of the legendary EC “New Trend” comics. William Gaines and his masterful crew published some of the most enduring comics and stories in the medium’s history, raising the bar in all categories — humor, science fiction, war, crime, and of course, legendarily, horror.
To celebrate this anniversary, we take a look at one of EC’s
greats — Jack Davis.
This Davis page is from Jack’s last horror story, “Upon Reflection,” from Tales From The Crypt #46, the final issue. Gaines, under censorship pressure — and unable to ensure distribution — raised the white flag and cancelled his horror and crime titles.
Davis telltale style drips all over this page. The old crone, the angry mob, and the tense claustrophobia in each panel spell out impending doom… for someone. (If we know the EC M.O., it will be a twist.)
The cover from this werewolf story has become one of the most iconic in horror comics history.
By 1955, Davis had easily become one of the most important artists in the EC “bullpen.” He was unfailingly reliable, tremendously gifted, and ridiculously prolific. Under the gun, he could pencil and ink three pages in day, without taking quality shortcuts.
Gaines, Davis, and nearly all of the rest of the EC mainstays reunited at the 1972 EC fan convention, organized by fans Bruce Hershenson and Ron Barlow. At various panels throughout the event, they reminisced about EC’s halcyon days, and the two spoke about Jack’s association with horror stories:
JACK DAVIS: I enjoyed doing the horror bit and they liked it, and so I kept at it. But when I looked back on it after things began to get very ticklish with the Code and everything, I began to ask – am I doing something constructive or good. I still, I don’t know, I don’t think it’s really that bad.
WILLIAM GAINES: You have to understand Jack comes from another era, and another kind of background. Jack was, and still is, a very moral, religious person. He came up here from Georgia… [laughter]…I’m serious now…and Jack did this stuff because it was his job as an artist. Jack has always had some misgivings about it, and I respect his misgivings. Jack has been more comfortable with other types of material than horror. But the fact that he’s a real pro is evident from the fact that although he wasn’t 100% comfortable with it, you see the job he did.
“Upon Reflection” is collected in both black and white and color versions, and the Tales From The Crypt cover adorns the Jack Davis EC Stories Artist’s Editionfrom IDW.
Three EC-related publications that warped my (very young) brain, and the rest, as they say, is history: The 1971 bio of Gaines that includes tremendous detail about EC’s rise and fall — and rise; Woody Gelman’s 1971 Nostalgia Press oversize collection of EC stories was my intro to the tales themselves; and the brilliant 1972 EC fan convention program which featured bios and caricatures of all the EC creators.EC publishes its own obituary.
The Iowa caucuses officially kicked off the 2020 national campaign season yesterday. (Although in the 21st century, it feels like every day, of every year, is campaign season. Sigh.)
Campaign season always makes me think of Jack Davis.
I loved his caricatures of famous politicians. Many of them
— especially in the 70s— had plenty of personality, and Davis, like a great
illustrator, could show you that personality through his art. And if they were
bland, boring, run of the mill politicians, Davis could still manage to find
something to say about them — truthful, of course –that would make you
smile.
I also liked that Davis, who went from EC horror artist to
one of America’s top commercial artists in less than 20 years, never became too
successful for appearances in the pages of Mad magazine.
This strip is from a multi-page story called “Wishful Thinking.” It appears to be done on a single board, so in all likelihood all the gags in this story are single pieces of art cobbled together to create story pages. That said, many oversized Mad original art pages have been cut up over the years, to sell individual gags like this separately, so it’s difficult to be definitive.
But it’s not difficult to be definitive about this: In addition to being one of the great American commercial artists, Davis is also one of my personal favorites. Want to offer me an original piece of art for a TV Guide or Time Magazine cover?
I’m all ears.
Published cover from early 1973, and an unpublished cover featuring Democratic candidates from early 1972. Jack’s art did not betray a specific political slant — he caricatured all comers. The unpublished piece is currently available for sale from Fred Taraba Illustration Art.
From an outstanding horror artist at EC Comics (“Foul Play,”above) — to one of America’s most recognizable and best-loved illustrators.
