Number 1008





Mort Drucker's Perry Mason





"The Night Perry Masonmint Lost A Case" is a favorite of mine, from Mad #48, 1959. Not only am I a fan of of artist Mort Drucker, but I also remember the Raymond Burr TV show with fondness. I watched it every week.



I downloaded the scans of the original art from Heritage Auctions. It went through some production phases in which it was cleaned up, where the bleed edges of the panel borders were covered up, giving it a neater appearance than it had in its primary state. Like many artists whose work was done for black line printing, Drucker used Craftint paper, "painting" with the chemical that brought out the ben day effects. That paper became known as Grafix, and is now no longer produced. (The end of an era.)



The first Perry Mason series lasted for nine seasons on CBS, and there was a time when he actually lost a case on television (CNN did some research at some point and found out he actually lost three of three hundred, not a bad track record). I remember the hoopla around that first "losing" episode. I wonder if this satire gave some Perry Mason producer or writer the idea.

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Number 170


The Earlier Side of Dave Berg


When cartoonist David Berg died at age 81 in 2002, he had drawn for Mad for over 40 years, appearing in over 350 issues. His wry observations about everyday life, "The Lighter Side" reflected his own life.

Before he worked for Mad Berg was a comic book cartoonist, contributing to different publishers over the years. I have two stories here from 1954, a Mad Comics-styled satire and an Archie-clone.

"King Arthur and His Squares Around the Round Table" appeared in Atlas Comics' Crazy #2, and the Merton story, "A Heck Of A Hair-do!" is from Meet Merton #3, published by Toby Comics.

I'm also posting a scan of the printed cover of Meet Merton #3, and a scan of the original art I found on the Internet. This will be kind of a test, fans…see if you can spot the differences between the original and printed versions of the cover illustration . Click on the pictures for full-size images.
 

Berg had a great pin-up style. He could draw really cute chicks! Marcia from the Merton strip is vivacious and pretty, and unlike the stupid guys in her life, I can appreciate her Italian hair-do. I appreciate everything else about her, too. The Merton story was aimed at pre-pubescent kids, but even they might've wondered why Merton isn't shown as being horny. I mean, two teenagers, a tunnel of love, a beautiful girl…and he brings garlic? I don't know if Berg wrote his own story, here, but he showed with his Mad output that he was more than capable.

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Number 137

The Bastard Children of Harvey Kurtzman

Harvey Kurtzman is one of my Personal Pantheon of Comic Art Gods.* He is one of a very small group of great cartoon art geniuses who make me laugh.

By creating Mad in 1952, and having it become one of the hippest and funniest comic books ever, he unleashed the unwanted children of success: the untalented imitators.

Anyone who loved Mad would know in an instant these lackluster imitations were not Mad. Although they were drawn by talented artists (for the most part), they were written and edited mostly by people who just didn't get what it was that made Mad great. They looked all all the surface stuff, like the little funny signs and bric-a-brac of the individual panels, the eye candy that Mad readers looked for. They might not have known that Harvey's stories were carefully thought out, worked out layer upon layer, and given to the artists with careful instructions to do it like Harvey intended. Woe unto those who didn't.The thing was, the imitators were giving the readers what they expected from 99% of the comics of the era: pale shadows of the greats, just more stuff pumped out to fill the newsstands, to keep the distribution chain going. It shouldn't be a surprise that Timely/Atlas gave readers two or three Mad imitations, because the whole company philosophy was to copy whatever was possible after someone else had blazed the trail.
Even EC Comics came out with an imitation of Mad, edited by Al Feldstein, who would go on to make Mad Magazine a major publishing success after Kurtzman's departure. But even the officially sanctioned imitation, Panic, using the same artists as Mad, couldn't match Mad in its originality or sales.Mad was as Kurtzman was, true original comic art genius.

All of these Mad imitators came out in 1953 and 1954. I give credit to Ross Andru and Mike Esposito for making the cover of Get Lost! #1 look like a Kurtzman cover, and also to the Charlton Eh! cover for making an obscene description of female anatomy into a cover. But other than that, these imitations are so pale compared to the original that they are just footnotes in comic book history.
Click on pictures for full-size images.

*Pappy's Personal Pantheon of Comic Art Gods are Harvey Kurtzman, Carl Barks, Walt Kelly, Charles Schulz and Robert Crumb.

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Number 120

Kelly Freas was a true Madman!

A couple of original Kelly Freas Mad Magazine covers showed up on an auction site recently.

Click on pictures for full-size images.

These artworks show what a great artist Freas was. Norman Mingo, who also did covers for Mad in the 1950s and '60s, was another great artist, but it was Freas who really caught my attention and caused me to pick up and buy Mad in the 1950s.

The printed covers, also taken from the Internet, show how much was lost during reproduction. Freas put a lot of work into each cover. Look at the textures on the weathervanes.

Artists who do the new Mad covers have a lot of talent, but they also have Photoshop to work with. They're good, but they don't have the individuality of style that Freas or Mingo had.

Freas died in 2005 at age 83. He left behind a legacy of work in the science fiction field that is unequaled, but his Mad humorous work is, for me, what made him a truly great illustrator.

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