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I was going to add this strip to my post on the passing of MORT DRUCKER, but I decided to publish it here so that, hopefully, more people see it. Truth to tell, I've got cleaner reprints of this strip in books and individual issues of MAD, but this far from pristine presentation comes from the '60s British edition (#59), which has text amendments to remove U.S. references that U.K. readers wouldn't have 'got'.
So if you're from the other side of the pond and have the original American version (or reprint), dig it out and have fun comparing the differences. However, while you're doing that, don't forget to appreciate the artistic genius of Mort Drucker, who drew many movie and TV parodies for the mag over several decades. When he retired, despite the sterling efforts of others, Mad was never quite the same again.
4 comments:
Of course, Drucker is best known for his caricatures and parodies for Mad. And maybe also for his work on DC comedy comics, such as The Adventures of Bob Hope.
He also did some good work on DC war comics.
There is a story that Mort got the Mad job on a bet. Supposedly, Bill Gaines promised to hire him if the Dodgers won the World Series. It made for a good anecdote,but, in an interview years later, Gaines admitted, "We would have hired him anyway."
It's hard to imagine what Mad would've been like without Mort, TC. Certainly the poorer, that's for sure. When people mention Mad, I immediately think of Mort and Don Martin.
I hadn't read this in a while, but it's just as great as I remembered. I suspect that Drucker might not have flourished so well under the editorship of Harvey Kurtzman, but who knows.
Didn't all Bat-fans love that line at the end, "The hipsters are squarer than the squares?"
This was in the days before videos and DVDs, so being able to see accurate likenesses of movie and TV stars in a comic strip had a greater impact back then. And nobody did it better than Mort, eh, GP?
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