Tuesday Comic Strip Day.
I said there'd be more. If there is ever going to be a book of the more than 200 Sundays Al Jaffee did of this strip, the toppers should be included. What impresses me is the fact that he did this many (plus about a thousand dailies) he is suddenly catapulted to the pole position of the ten or twenty most creative and imortant cartoonists of his age. It has always bothered me that all Mad artists have sort of disappeared into anonimity because of their association with the magazine. The Not Yet Ready For Prime Time Players all recieved induvidual status as actors and comedians despite their start at SNL. Mad's Maddest Artists were always a group rather than individuals, with Sergio Aragones and Jack Davis possible being the only one to create a name for themself apart from that (by producing twice as much). Compare that to current sometime Mad artists such as Bob Staake.
Maybe my old friend Mike Lynch can think of something to rectify the situation. ow about a huge New York exhibition about Mad artist such as Jaffee, Aragones, Edwing, Martin, King, Berg, Davis, Torres, Drucker, Clarke (what a huge talent he was and mostly ignored outide of Mad) honoring their careers inside and out of Mad.
And man, what I woudn't give to meet the surviving members of that group. For me comic collecting and even my career as a humorist stated with Feldstein's Mad. Oh, oh,oh, let's have Dave Letterman open the exhibition. Heck, he may even pay for it.
July 9 1961
July 16 1961:
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