Mad Magazine, the long-running humor magazine, which sliced sacred cows of every facet of life from the left, right and the middle, announced last week that it is ceasing publication after its August issue. For many generations of fans who grew up with and were heavily if not solely influenced by the magazine in their youth, the announcement closes a chapter in the annals of American humor.
Happy 84th Birthday today to Mort Drucker, one of the art medium’s great caricaturists, whose work for decades upon decades in Mad Magazine has endeared him to millions of fans around the world and set a bar for himself as one of the genres great artists of all-time.
Starting at Mad in the late 1950s and still contributing to the magazine to the present day, what the art of Mort Drucker has brought to that publication is immeasurable. His caricatures are highly distinctive and original and they run the gamut and spectrum of pretty much everyone in any form of entertainment media, be it from Hollywood’s finest and not-so-finest past and present, music titans, sports figures, and television characters. Drucker stands second to possibly only the late Al Hirschfeld, who elevated and pretty much clamped down on the entire caricature style in illustration and became synonymous with it, creating a body of work that lasted over 70 years and was affixed to everything from Broadway Showbills to U.S. postage stamps.
Students of the Unusual™ comic cover used with permission of 3BoysProductions
The Mercuri Bros.™ comic cover used with permission of Prodigal Son Press