That’s funny, he doesn’t look guruish.
What a talent.
RIP, Al
For better or worse, I like to think that “Mad” magazine had an influential impact on my sarcastic sense of humor, and love for satire and parody. Growing up in the 1970’s, I loved the magazine.
RIP, and thanks for decades of fun.
Mad Magazine is largely responsible for my sense of humor, to this day.
Wow, what memories of growing up in the 50’s.
I was always at the newsstand (remember those?) to get the latest copies of Mad and Scientific American.
Spy vs Spy
bumpsky
At the age of 17, he enlisted in the Army Air Corps in July, 1943, as an aviation cadet and began his basic training in Blytheville, Arkansas. His cadet class was held in reserve, and he was assigned to Special Services, creating signs and service club murals, decorating planes and flight jackets, drawing comic strips for field newspapers and painting squadron insignias for orderly rooms.
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.
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.
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.”
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.
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.
RIP.