Mad As A Nutter

Saturday Leftover Day.

The Most was a shortlived cartoon digest from Toby. Jack Mendelsohn was the editor and apart from selecting the material and sometimes writing new captions because the old ones were so bad, he also contributed some gags and pages of his own. I have already shown that he was doing Mad-like stuff long before everyone (in 1000 Jokes) and here again he strike a satirical tone (only just before he was asked to write for EC's own Mad knock-off Panic).

Not What It Seems

Tuesday Comic Strip Day.

I have shown some samples of this strip before, but if I had more, I would gladly show them all. In 1952 later comic book artist and pulp writer Lou Cameron did a shortlived series that can be seen as a precursor to the later Mad magazine. His So It Seems featured a Mad-like series of illustrations of a comic premiss every day. I don;t think he influenced anyone with this - not Harvey Kurtzman, who never actually went for this type of humor, nor Al feldstein, who did not need inspiration. In my book Behaving Madly (about the Mad magazine imitations of the late fifties) I did not have room to show this (or any of the other precursors) but I do mention it, when Mr. Cameron shows up in some of the later pardoies I did include in the book. Apparently he was very much suited to this type of work, only no one ever knew, so he only did it sporadictly. Sy Grudk, who took over from him, didn't always follow the concept to the letter, but he did keep it going into 1953, although it may actually have run shorter than I know, because some of these strips have different dates on them.

And Now A Word From Our Sponsor

Wednesday Advertising Day.

The smart kids in the class will have seen that I have a new addition to my Amazon links. Yes, it is a link to the page where you can buy my new upcoming book on Mad Magazine imitations from Yoe Books and IDW. 208 pages, hard cover and only $34 (which means it is now $28 at Amazon). Knowing IDW they will allow the print run to be influenced by the presale results, so please go and pre-order yours. It is a labout of love, I have been working on for more than five yers now. A complete overview of all Mad imitations of the late fifties, with 160 of reprint material from the best artists in the bussiness and some that may not be as well know but are certainly just as interesting.

Of course, in making the book I made a lot of scans of pages that didn't make the final cut. I will be sharing some of those here as well as opening a Facebook page for the whole book and subject where I will show probably even more. I do not want to show too many of those yet, because I don;t want to give the impression these will be in the book - and I also can't give away all the rarities that are in there. So you'll just have to wait a bit. If you like this blog, you will love the book. Find u on Facebook and tell everyone Ger Apeldoorn sent you.

I Hear Ya'

Saturday Leftover Day.

Here's an oddity for you. Steven Thompson found this online in the June 1949 issue of Radio Best magazines. A series of imagined radio personalities portaits by Secret Agent X9 artist Mel Graff paired with their actual photos. It all looks pretty Mad-like to us, except that it isn't meant to be funny and Mad was not around yet, of course. But when Lee Elias later worked for Mad imitations Lunatickle and Cockeyed, he employed exacly the same style. Anyway, I looked around a bit and found another installment in the May issue. And since this is called a 'department' it may even have been in other issues as well, although none of those show up online.

Mendelsohn's March of Comics

Monday Cartoon Day.

It took some time to get the scans done, but here are the samples of Jack Mendelsohn's work as a satirical writer I promised last week. Although Mendelsohn became an important writer for Mad later on in the sicties, he dabbled in the genre pretty early on. The first sample is one from a 1950 issue of Dell's 1000 Jokes. The editor of this issue was Mort walker, by the way. I have already shown some of Walker's written pieces for that issue. Or at least the signed ones, as it is possible he did more than just the two I found. I have been looking for the other Walker edited issues from that period, but they haven't turned up yet. If anyone has any to share, please let me know.

As you can see, Mendelsohn's piece was nothing more than an artist's attempt to sell more than one cartoons. Magazines such as 1000 jokes often grouped cartoons together around a theme, so it doesn't come as a surprise that some enterprising cartoonists started assembling their own themed pages. However this page came to be, it is an early example of the 'statement and samples' style of humor that was popularized at Mad under Al Feldsein. As normal as we may think of that 'top ten list' type of humor these days, I have found no samples of it in the humor magazines in the thirties (although there might have been one occasionally) and even Harvey Kurtzman (who did this type of humor for some of his pieces in Variety before Mad, didn't use it in his version of the magazine Mad. It's probably one of those things, which everyone picks up as soon as they see it works (like the addition of speech balloons to photo's with funny captions by Harvey Kurtzman and Stan Lee, who came upon it independendly around the same time).

1000 Jokes, Spring 1950:


The next two pieces are among the prize elements of my book on Mad magazine imitations, if it ever comes to be. I have written about the Mad cmic imitations of 1954 for alter Ego, but an even bigger and more impressive piece could be done about the Mad magazine imitation sof 1957 to 1959. The number of great pages by surprising artists and brand names is staggering. If my current negotiations to turn the first article into a book are a succes, the magazine part will be likely to follow.

One of the major outfits to try and imitate the succes of Kurtman's magazine version of his comic book hit Mad, was pocket book, magazine and comics producer Fawcett. Here was an outfit with seriously deep pockets. They knew that it was wirth the trouble to put out a bit of cash for a magazine that could potentially sell a million copies. And so they hired the best talent, among them Russ Heath, Joe Kubert, Mike Sekowsky, Ross Andru, Basil Wolverton, Jack Mendelsohn and Lee Elias. Their effort was called Lunatickle and it didn't run for more than two issues. But similar material turned up at a cheaper made photo humor book called Cockeyed. This may have been material prepared for a third issue of Lunatickle, but I can't be sure. Both articles here were written by Mendelsohn, whowrote a lot of these books, but he certainly wasn't the only writer. Or even the only name writer. The second one should please any horror comic fan, as it is a ten page examnation of the comic book trials that were held in New York by senator Kefauver. It is everything you wld have hoped Kurtzman's parody of senator McCarthy's communist witchhunt trails What's My Line in Mad would have bee if it had tackled this subject.

Cockeyed #5:






Lunatickle #2:

Filling the'gap'

Friday Comic Book Day.

Earlier this week I showed you Ray Bailey's 16 page 'educational' Steve Canyon effort for Harvey Comics. Most posters agree that the heads in that story were probably done by Milt Caniff himself, even pointing out one non-fitting unusually large head in the story. One poster also pointed out that the inking seemd a little bit for Bailey himself. I have not really compared it to the ining on the early Tom Corbett strips, which were contemporary with this book, but in the meantime I did look up the work of another Caniff assistent to compare. Bill Overgard assited Caniff in the late forties and probably the early fifties on Steve Canyon. I am not quite sure about the dates or the details, but I do know that Caniff suggested his former assistant when te syndicate was looking for a replacement artist for Steve Roper. Overgard took on that strip and made it his own. Just before that he ahd a last go at Steve Canyon int this spoof of the strip from Whack #2. As I noted in my article on the Mad imtations of 1954, Whack was one of the better ones. This was partly due to the style and taste of editors Joe Kubert and Norm Maurer, but also to the stylistic skills of Bill Overgard, who produced this bit of comic mimicry as well as a veru good parody of The Cisco Kid.