Mad Art: A Visual Celebration of the Art of Mad Magazine and the Idiots Who Create It: Amazon.ca: Mark Evanier: Books

Product Description

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.

From Booklist

Mad magazine has been corrupting young minds, in a good way, for half a century. As befits the institution it has become, it receives the coffee-table-book treatment with comics historian Evanier's showcase of the artists who have been Mad mainstays over the years. Evanier profiles the unusual members of "the usual gang of idiots" (as the masthead has long called them), of whom the most prominent include cartoonists Jack Davis and Will Elder, with Mad from the beginning; such second-generation stars as master caricaturist Mort Drucker and "Mad's maddest artist," Don Martin, whose baggy-faced as well as -pantsed style virtually defined Mad during its heyday; and talented relative newcomers Drew Friedman and Peter Kuper. Each profile accompanies well-chosen samplings of the artist's work, and Evanier continues his sprightly, informative commentary in additional chapters on Mad's early days, the gestation of a Mad feature, and other matters. A nostalgic treat for boomers as well as a revealing look at Mad today. Gordon Flagg
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Product Description

Tag this product

(What's this?)

Think of a tag as a keyword or label you consider is strongly related to this product.
Tags will help all customers organize and find favorite items.

Customer Reviews

9 Reviews

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

Average Customer Review

4.0 out of 5 stars (9 customer reviews)

Share your thoughts with other customers:

Create your own review

Most helpful customer reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars too small to read, Oct 14 2003

By

Eugen "easmax" (Berkeley, CA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Mad Art: A Visual Celebration of the Art of Mad Magazine and the Idiots Who Create It (Paperback)

I could not believe that a book with such obvious
interest to many would be printed in the form it was.
The print is so small in the cartoons that have been
reproduced that one needs a magnifying glass to read.

And I am not exagerrating. I would rate this book
as a 5 if it were not published with such unreadable print.

Help other customers find the most helpful reviews

Was this review helpful to you? Yes No

Report abuse

4.0 out of 5 stars All I Need To Know About The Sixties I Learned From MAD!, Nov 20 2003

By

The Sanity Inspector (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Mad Art: A Visual Celebration of the Art of Mad Magazine and the Idiots Who Create It (Paperback)

What a rush of nostalgia this compilation of MAD art brings back! I first started reading MAD as a late pre-teen, in the early Seventies. As I collected issues, I came into possession of some older copies, from which I got my first impressions of the lately concluded Sixties. The early MAD, freshly spawned from EC Comics back when William Gaines had a buzzcut, didn't interest me. But once he let his hair down and assembled his famous Usual Gang Of Idiots, the resulting humor and satire was a surefire hit with smart-alecky adolescent boys like me.

This collection presents a couple of pages of biography on each artist, along with a few panels of their work. I remembered most all of them from my era, but some were rediscoveries for me. Sergio Aragones, Jack Davis, Paul Coker, Jr., Al Jaffee with his goony inventions, Dave Berg--to name them is to summon to mind a favorite riff in the greatest cartooning ensemble ever assembled. Possibly the most poignant was the sad case of Don Martin, who drew those jug-headed characters in those "One Fine Day" episodes. Through illness and unspecified other problems, he was forced into an unwanted collaboration with the equally talented Duck Edwing, and then decamped altogether to an imitator, before passing away not too long ago.

If you are not familiar with MAD, then you certainly can't be expected to have all these fond memories. The social satire is dated in a retrospective like this, too. But coming to the collection cold, you'll still find something to chuckle at, surely. With so much talent on display, it'd be impossible not to.

Help other customers find the most helpful reviews

Was this review helpful to you? Yes No

Report abuse

3.0 out of 5 stars Artist only please????, Nov 2 2003

By

M. B. RENTZLER (Brooklyn, NY USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)

This review is from: Mad Art: A Visual Celebration of the Art of Mad Magazine and the Idiots Who Create It (Paperback)

I liked this book in the sense that it was a Mad sampler. I got to see art by old friends (I have been into Mad since the early 1970s) but I don't know if a novice researcher would find this book as good. There are short biographical sketches of all involved.

The best history of Mad was The Mad World Of Bill Gaines which is sadly out of print for decades now.

Also while I know that the title is Mad Art this book lacks for not talking of the writers of Mad.

Help other customers find the most helpful reviews

Was this review helpful to you? Yes No

Report abuse

Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review

› See all 9 customer reviews on Amazon.ca

Want to see more reviews on this item?

› Go to Amazon.com to see all 10 reviews 4.1 out of 5 stars

Most recent customer reviews

3.0 out of 5 stars The Tepid Mad
Everyone has nostalgic affection for what Mad once was, and the art generated for it in its heyday has been endlessly recycled. Read more

Published on July 4 2003 by n0s4a2