Mad Art : A Visual Celebration of the Art of Mad Magazine and the Idiots Who Create It - Softcover

Evanier, Mark

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0823030806 ISBN 13: 9780823030804

Publisher: Watson-Guptill, 2003

Synopsis

A fiftieth anniversary tribute to MAD Magazine celebrates famous cartoon figures from its "Usual Gang of Idiots," in a volume that features rare sketches and interviews with veteran MAD artists and writers. Original.

About this title

About the Author:

Mark Evanier is a writer and a historian on the subjects of cartooning and entertainment. A former assistant to the legendary cartoonist Jack Kirby, Evanier went on to write comic books for Disney, Gold Key, DC Comics, and Eclipse, and collaborates with MAD artist Sergio AragonŽs on Groo the Wanderer. He lives in Los Angeles, California. MAD and all related indicia (r) and (c) 2002 E. C. Publications Inc.

From Publishers Weekly:

About the shape and weight of a telephone directory, this book has room enough to live up to its subtitle-and more. It begins with legendary cartoonist Harvey Kurtzman and his creation of Mad as a humor comic book in 1952 and continues to the present, artist by artist. Early artists tend to get more space because they helped create the magazine's style and also because some of them have continued to contribute drawings for decades. Jack Davis and Mort Drucker, for example, are each allotted eight pages, enough for an irreverent but affectionate biographical write-up and a variety of art samples. Lesser, later artists get a paragraph and one panel. Along the way, Evanier gives a lot of background information about the comics industry and about the process by which Mad has been produced. In short, this is a book for people who are curious about individual artists, the history of Mad magazine or comics as a business. Mad's success for half a century shows it has mastered the knack of laughing with its targets while laughing at them. Indeed, many of the celebrities the magazine has skewered over the years have felt flattered to find themselves the subjects of Mad caricatures. It helps that so much of the magazine focuses on relatively nonthreatening subjects, such as popular culture and suburbia. The only political commentary cutting enough to draw blood is on Ronald Reagan. But clearly the Mad staff knows what it's doing and has been doing it extremely well.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Watson-Guptill
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0823030806
• ISBN 13: 9780823030804
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 304