The Fabuleous Fifties

Jack's Diary, aged almost 50 yrs

Tuesday Comic Strip Day

Here's a special strip that's unjustly forgotten. It was called Jacky's Diary and was written and drawn by Jack Mendelsohn. Mendelsohn was a pretty funny guy, who wrote for many Mad imtations (including EC's Panic) and ended up at Mad itself. He had a very satirical mind and some of his earliest work in the forties prefigures the later Mad style articles of Al Feldstein. I am not saying these things couldn't be in the air, but Mendelsohn certainly was there first. For this Sunday only strip he created something he could draw himself and again, although it has been done afterwards (for instance very well in the later Crazy by Mike Carlin and there is a very funny British line of faux diary series without cartoons called: Zoekresultaten The Secret Diary Of Adrian Mole Aged 13¾, which was even turned into a movie), he was the first. So this is for all you editors out there looking for something worthwhile to reprint. Jacky's diary was adapted by Paramount into two cartoons and it also was a Dell comic. All that and more I will share later this week. Now first my samples for 1959 (with more to follow).