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Posted on 05/01/2014 6:35:15 AM PDT by Borges
Al Feldstein, who took over a fledgling humor magazine called Mad in 1956 and made it a popular, profitable and enduring wellspring of American satire, died on Tuesday at his ranch in Paradise Valley, Mont. He was 88.
His wife, the former Michelle Key, confirmed the death. In recent years, he was a wildlife and landscape painter in Montana, outside Livingston.
Mr. Feldstein had been a writer and illustrator of comic books when he became editor of Mad four years into its life and just a year after it had graduated from comic-book form to a full-fledged magazine.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
I had some of the paperback books (they were hilarious) and I'm supposed to have some reproductions of some of the original comic books around here somewhere.
Before Saturday Night Live and SCTV, there was Mad Magazine.
Pure genius.
Oh, yeah. Mad had a number of pull out "45's", some of which were positively brilliant. I specifically recall the All in the Family parody issue, complete with a plastic sheet 45 record - "Gall in the Family Fare". The Archie Bunker impression was great and precient.. "They ain't laughin' at me... they're laughin' wit' me..."
ping
What I remember about that the first time I read it, at the time, I had no idea who Adolf Hitler was, so it kind of went over my head.
I loved those cartoons by Sergio Aragones. I used to have several paperback books of them but lost them in the Tulsa flood back in 1976.
Outstanding!
http://money.msn.com/business-news/article.aspx?feed=AP&date=20140501&id=17576010
“We even used to rake the hippies over the coals,” Feldstein would recall. “They were protesting the Vietnam War, but we took aspects of their culture and had fun with it. Mad was wide open. Bill (Gaines) loved it, and he was a capitalist Republican. I loved it, and I was a liberal Democrat.”
Sergio Aragones talks about getting his start in drawing for money, working for Mad, and as a quick sketch artist (1 hour, 11 minutes)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGJ_NSO-ESo
MAD introduced me to a lot of stuff. First Shakespeare I ever read was their “cool guy translation” of Mark Antony’s speech at Caesar’s funeral. I remember a lot of their material revolving around Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, they’re a lot of why we picked March 15 for our wedding (we wanted an ominous day, and the first Friday the 13th was my friend’s birthday, and I mentioned 2 days after that).
Al was awesome, but always said he was in the right place at the right time and gave all the credit to Harvey Kurtzman for making the comic and later, the magazine. I always thought he was a great guy.
MAD was my favorite magazine in my youth. I enjoyed searching for the little jokes in tiny print on the edges of some pages. Can’t easily do that with digital media. Nor can you fold the page to see a hidden graphic as with the rear page of the magazine. Great stuff. RIP.
That is new to me. Very interesting. Thanks so much.
MAD Magazine a big influence on me when I was growing up.
Mort Drucker’s work was always my favorite, but MAD’s entire staff were awesome.
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