Guest Writer - A MAD Magazine Retrospective, with Redartz

Doug: I hope February finds you a happy camper. Here in the Midwest, many of us mark this month as sort of the "dog days" of winter. The month generally begins cold, with plenty of possibilities yet for wintry precipitation. Long about the third week of the month, it's likely we'll see a day or two in the high 60s; we used to just hate it back when I was coaching track & field... The weather during the indoor season could often be nicer than when we began our outdoor meets in mid-March. But I digress...

I am thrilled today to host the musings of a longtime friend and collaborator. Way back in the BAB's heyday, at times my partner Karen and I would face lapses in post ideas or even hear the knock of the Dreaded Deadline Doom. We were fortunate to be able to enlist the aid of two wonderful collaborators who helped us shoulder the load in the last two years of the BAB's run. Those lads then went on to provide two more years of fun in their own space, Back in the Bronze Age. It's a blog that remains open each Tuesday as a forum, but please do check out their backlog of posts - you'll be amazed at the level of creativity and the wonderful community of readers.

Most of my experience with today's topics and artists comes only through paperback reprints of Don Martin's cartoons, or Spy vs. Spy. I was never a regular reader of MAD, or Crazy, or Cracked... So without further rambling from me, allow me to step offstage so that you can enjoy a romp through MAD Magazine, with today's driver, Redartz.

MAD Magazine 147 (December 1971)

MAD Magazine 184 (July 1976)

Redartz: Greetings, everyone. Our illustrious host Doug has graciously offered me a chance to spout off a few MAD words. MAD magazine, that is...

 

MAD magazine nowadays is almost a cultural institution. But back in the days when I read it, away from the disapproving eyes of my Mom, it still had a rather subversive feel. Unlike the comic books I usually read, MAD told its tales in glorious black and white. That alone made it seem more 'adult', somehow. And when you opened the pages of the 40 cent (cheap; it said so right on the cover) mag, you encountered humor much juicier than that found in Archie, Gold Key or Harvey productions.

 

MAD cast its sardonic eye upon all the nuttiness in this crazy world. Politics, movies, TV, sex, espionage, and all the tribulations of everyday life: literally everything was fair game. No wonder my parents frowned upon my reading it. But to my view, it opened up a wide vista of previously verboten subject matter (still a few years before I discovered underground comix). Mad's “usual gang of idiots” presented their iconoclastic humor with wit and a “nudge, nudge, wink, wink” sensibility. Which is only to be expected from an all-star group of creators, many of them veterans of the classic EC comics of the 1950s. Of course, at that point I'd never heard of EC; I just knew I liked Jack Davis's funny drawings...

 

And that seems a perfect spot to segue into a look at some of those creators' work. Oh, be sure to watch within the examples for the almost ubiquitous border scribblings of Sergio Aragones. “They're everywhere, they're everywhere”...

 

To start, here's a bit of fun from the above-mentioned Mr. Davis. This particular example doesn't really highlight Davis' wacky, gawky, exaggerated figurative humor, but does show his penchant for cramming details into a panel, page or cover. The magazine illustrated here pokes some fun at the then-current 'disaster movie' craze.

 

 

Next up is a page from Al Jaffee. Al works in a more "cartoony" style, but one which very effectively gets the joke across to the viewer. Two things I found noteworthy of this page were the lack of panel borders, and the nice contrast between Jaffee's rendering of daytime and nighttime.

 

 

Now here's Dave Berg. A name and artist familiar to anyone who ever read many MAD issues. Berg both wrote and drew his features. Using a rather unflattering, mundane depiction for his cast of ordinary folks, Berg skewered the everyday challenges and frustrations of 20^th century life.

 

Another MAD favorite was Don Martin. Martin's slapstick humor and histrionic styling brings to my mind the work of Gary Larson in “The Far Side”. This sample shows a bit of his lighthearted dementia...

 

 

An artist perhaps less familiar by name is Paul Coker, Jr. Coker's almost 'greeting card humor' approach visually may be more recognizable than his name. And you may also recognize his work in the character designs from the animated “Frosty the Snowman” TV special. Coker could hide some rather adult themes within his friendly, appealing drawings...

 

The man behind “Spy vs. Spy” was Antonio Prohias. Clean, angular, purely visual humor that perfectly told the innumerable conflicts of those two antagonistic agents...

 

 

Finally we have Mort Drucker and Angelo Torres. Both of these artists were adept at caricaturing the famous and not-so-famous faces of popular culture. Many of MAD's movie and TV parodies featured the byline of Drucker or Torres. Here's some 70s vintage material from each of them...

 

 

 

Going back into these magazines after so many years away from them was both fun and educational. As a 21st century adult, I still found the humor amusing. Some of the features don't age as well as others, some references are clearly dated. And to be honest, some things found in those vintage issues are rather cringeworthy in today's more politically-correct world. Personally, I found the jokes that held up best were the less topical ones, such as “Spy vs. Spy” and much of Don Martin's drollery. Regardless, reading those magazines now becomes very much a 'time capsule' experience, totally capturing the feel of those heady days of the 70s. Kind of makes me feel the desire to hide them under the bed before my Mom walks in...