For almost eight years I lived and grew up in Saudi Arabia. We’d also come back to the UK from time to time for holidays and visiting family. Given that I loved comics, it gave me a peculiar blend of influences. In the UK I had a range of British comics where I enjoyed everything from The Beano, Dandy and Beezer to Eagle and 2000AD. When I was in Saudi the selection was dominated by American supply, but Superhero comics were not actually very available (I could pick up annuals here and there second-hand). What was available was MAD Magazine. As a young kid, I often didn’t get all of the references and anything lewd would be censored by the Saudi officials With thick black marker. I also think my parents didn’t really appreciate that this magazine was intended for more mature audiences!
So going into this research task, I am filled with many fond memories of somehow feeling like I was in a secret club. The writing and imagery of MAD has had a huge influence on my outlook and it nurtured a subversive mischievousness that has kept my mind open and my scepticism of authority well-honed as an adult.
Don Martin
Martin’s approach feels closer to the zany cartoons of British comics that was used to as a child. His characters don’t have a lot of facial variation, but that allows him to develop a distinct and easily-recognisable style. I’ve noticed more than a few similarities between Martin’s style of cartooning and the original artists behind Viz magazine Graham Drury and Simon Thorp, especially the overly bulbous noses, compressed eyes and knobbly joints. His approach allows him to embrace the more weird and grotesque features of his characters and situations. His strips are very foreground focused; his backgrounds are particularly sparse and he uses the minimum amount of detail needed to tell his stories. Often they even seem incidental to the stories.
His characters are exaggerated, but not in the same way as caricatures are. They play with almost animation-like qualities of squash and stretch in both features and posture. I really like his work and how carefree it feels.
Antonio Prohias
Spy Vs. Spy is one of my lasting and abiding memories of MAD. It was my favourite strip by far. Even as a child, I understood the implicit Cold War undertones, but I loved the triangular titular characters and their over-the-top Machiavellian ploys to destroy each other. It was impossible to say if you like Heckel or Jeckel best, and ultimately I think that was the point of its analogy of the warring superpowers of the day. I loved it so much, it was one of my favourite games on my Sega Master System!
I think what appeals to me most about the Spy Vs. Spy strips are their pantomime. The lack of text (Prohias never really learned good English) means that all the information is conveyed visually and plays heavily into slapstick. This means it communicates well across both age and language barriers.
Mort Drucker
Drucker’s caricatures were one of MAD magazine’s defining features. He was largely self taught, and because he often had to put his subjects into satirised stories, he focused their essence (looking at not only shape, lines, wrinkles but also how they help themselves, moved and reacted) rather than just massively exaggerating features. I find the square speech bubbles used in his pieces an interesting device - they allowed for printed text to be placed easily rather than more traditional lettering techniques.
While he often did make the heads larger, a common caricaturing trait, his panels didn’t have to rely on this tactic. In fact in may ways Drucker was a student of realism the panels he drew were always believable with well-observed environments. He could switch to a more cartoony style if he needed to, shown in his work for the Bob Hope comic (which had a much more conventional mid-century comic approach not dissimilar to Bob Montana’s early Archie comics) as well as his own Benchley strip.
He had a very elegant way of using both pen and brush to create his characters and scenes. I particularly like how he effortlessly creates hair. The other thing I appreciated was the way that he caricatured beautiful women. Whilst he obviously exaggerated some of their curves I feel that often he held the women in respect - if they were sexualised it seemed to be in a way that lampooned Hollywood’s own sexualisation of women. Almost calling it out and showing how absurd it is. Many of his female characters had more realistic proportions and features, but were still shown to be beautiful, I appreciate this more humanistic viewpoint.
I think he handled a lot of women with tact, and managed to be respectful of their inherent beauty even when the strip required them to be exaggerated or more grotesque versions of themselves. Rather than being token entries, he respected that traditionally beautiful women had less lines and wrinkles - they are curves and softer features - which are much more difficult to exaggerate. Yet when you look at this work there are such a variety of realistic and accurate facial expressions, hair styles and poses that didn’t treat even background characters as token additions.
Al Jaffee
Jaffee’s work was also one of the defining features of MAD magazine. Whilst he contributed to many areas of the magazine over his career, the part he remains most famous for was the famous folding back cover. As a young reader, this was only of my favourite elements. Often these pages were innocent on the face of it, only showing their inherent humour once you folded the page in on itself.
This meant that they would usually go completely over the heads of the Saudi censors, adding to the subversive appeal MAD had for me as a child. They didn’t need to be lewd or radical. The very fact that they were hidden made me feel like I was in on the secret.
His fold-in scenes often had a stylised realism about them. They are very wel-observed and what makes them even more witty is the way Jaffee was able to also make the text of the image also concatenate to create an entirely new phrase and meaning. It’s really very good writing. I have thought recently about trying my own attempt at the fold-in device, but I think one of the hardest parts is going to be in the writing of the page, rather than the rendering.
Jaffee’s other work in MAD is simpler and much more cartoony. It reads more like a newspaper cartoon in the way it seems to be done quickly with energetic lines and simple ink washes. His colour work, however feels more careful, and you start to see some of the attention that he put into his fold-in cover illustrations. All of his work is rooted in pantomime which adds to its energy. His work has such variety that while I was amazed to find out that he only retired at the age of 99(!) I was also not surprised: anyone with such prestigious talent would always be in high demand.
Jack Davis
Not on the list for this exercise, I feel that to omit the work of Davis would be a mistake. Also a MAD staple, Davis’s work seemed to be a Venn diagram for other MAD artists. He was able to caricature, providing covers in the same way Drucker did but also had a style that lent itself to more pantomime content.
What I like about Davis’s work is less the caricature (he became associated with caricatures of sports figures in the same way Mort Drucker was associated with Film and TV) but more his cartoon-y elements. His early work in the more graphic horror stories of EC comics seems to have carried through to later work in his career. It lends a rougher, weirder element to the zany pantomime comics of MAD. His strip work seems to rely much more on brush work than pen and I really like how he able to render clothes simply but effectively with accurate and well-observed folds, wrinkles and creases.
A lot of his MAD work seems to have amazing frenetic energy to it. It embraces chaos. He combined his work with grey paints in MAD, but on his covers and colour work he used watercolours. This is something I have been trying to blend together for some time myself, and his work is at once inspiration and frustration! He manages to get such amazing saturation to his work without anything becoming overly muddy. His line work on bigger pieces is lovely - he embraces angles and uneven surfaces, seeking to use detail to add visual interest and little humour outs touches, but he also balances this - his images never seem to be overcrowded even when he takes on large scenes with multiple elements.
While Mort Drucker’s characters were drawn in a way that they fit seamlessly into his caricatures of famous people, Davis’s approach seemed to split them into two camps. His supporting characters tended to learn towards his angular energetic cartoon style while the celebrity subjects tended to be much more traditional caricatures. In that, I believe, he was not as successful as Drucker. His subject seem more stilted and wooden.
His treatment of women, in particular, is much more chauvinistic. The ‘sexy women’ of his backgrounds are almost cookie-cutter in approach, which very little variation and no nuance or ennui. I am not sure if it was his approach to women that landed his work for Playboy during his brief MAD hiatus, or whether it was his time working for Playboy that cemented a particular way of looking at and representing women. Either way, I think it makes his work featuring ‘sexy women’ rather hollow. So if I am going to take anything away from Davis’s work and let it influence my own, I think it will be of his cartoon characters.
References
(Multiple internet image searches were used to find reference images on which to comment, compare and contrast the artists listed above. These are too numerous to list individually and none are referenced directly.)
Apatoff, D., 2015. MORT DRUCKER'S BEAUTIFUL WOMEN. [online] Illustrationart.blogspot.com. Available at: http://illustrationart.blogspot.com/2015/06/mort-druckers-beautiful-women.html [Accessed 24 July 2021].
Gamespot, n.d. Spy Vs. Spy - Screenshot. [image] Available at: https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/sms/588150-spy-vs-spy/images/29 [Accessed 24 July 2021].
Greenfield, D. and Martin, N., 2019. 13 CARTOONS: A DON MARTIN Salute. [online] 13th Dimension, Comics, Creators, Culture. Available at: https://13thdimension.com/13-cartoons-a-don-martin-salute/ [Accessed 24 July 2021].
Hoberman, J., 2020. Mort Drucker, Master of the Mad Caricature, Is Dead at 91. [online] Nytimes.com. Available at: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/09/arts/mort-drucker-dead.html [Accessed 24 July 2021].
Knudde, K. and Schuddeboom, B., 2021. Jack Davis. [online] lambiek.net. Available at: https://www.lambiek.net/artists/d/davis.htm [Accessed 24 July 2021].
Knudde, K., 2021. Antonio Prohias. [online] lambiek.net. Available at: https://www.lambiek.net/artists/p/prohias_antonio.htm [Accessed 24 July 2021].
Knudde, K., 2021. Mort Drucker. [online] lambiek.net. Available at: https://www.lambiek.net/artists/d/drucker_mort.htm [Accessed 24 July 2021].
lambiek.net. 2021. Don Martin. [online] Available at: https://www.lambiek.net/artists/m/martin_don.htm [Accessed 24 July 2021].
Madmagazine.com. 2016. MAD Remembers Jack Davis, Artist. [online] Available at: https://www.madmagazine.com/blog/2016/07/27/mad-remembers-jack-davis-artist [Accessed 24 July 2021].
Madmagazine.com. 2020. RIP, Mort Drucker 1929-2020. [online] Available at: https://www.madmagazine.com/blog/2020/04/09/rip-mort-drucker-1929-2020 [Accessed 24 July 2021].
Stoogeypedia, 2013. Remembering Mad Magazine's 'Maddest Artist' Don Martin On The 13th Anniversary Of His Passing - Geeks of Doom. [online] Geeks of Doom. Available at: https://geeksofdoom.com/2013/01/06/remembering-mad-magazines-maddest-artist-don-martin-on-the-13th-anniversary-of-his-passing?amp [Accessed 24 July 2021].
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