Happy 89th Birthday Mort Drucker!

Me and Mort, 2006 NCS Reuben Award Weekend, Chicago IL

March is a big month for MAD birthdays… today (well, actually tomorrow the 22nd but WordPress sucks and posted this 22 hours earlier than scheduled) is the incomparable Mort Drucker‘s 89th! Happy birthday to one of the greatest cartoonists and caricaturists who ever put pen to paper!!

To say Mort “wrote the book” on MAD‘s movie and TV parodies is an enormous understatement. By most accounts, the film and TV show spoofs became a staple of the MAD identity largely because of Mort’s unique talents.

When Mort brought his work in to show the folks at MAD in 1956, the stuff in his portfolio didn’t show the genius for caricature that would later define his career. Most of it was cartoony comic book art like Hopalong Cassidy and comic strip work, and it was good stuff… the MAD guys didn’t hesitate to offer Mort work (and yes, the Dodgers won that game but it was later revealed Mort was still going to get the work). It didn’t take Al Feldstien, Nick Meglin and the rest of the MAD staff long to discover their new artist has a very special gift… a startling ability to capture humorous likenesses in caricature while still serving strong comics-style storytelling. MAD had started out as a comic book spoofing other comic books, but they had since shifted to a magazine and were looking at targeting the larger world of entertainment, pop culture, and current events in their pages. They had done a few sporadic movie and TV parodies like “King Kong”, “High Noon”, “Dragnet”, “From Here to Eternity” and others with some likenesses of actors involved, but they were far from a usual feature or a focus. Suddenly they found they had an artist who could draw incredible likenesses, draw funny, capture the action and feel of the target films/shows, and add gags to the mix. Recognizing what a unique talent Mort was, they basically set up the film and TV parody genre around his art skills. Jack Davis, Angelo Torres, Harry North, Sam Viviano and others eventually took that ball and ran with it, but it was really Mort who invented the game.

Happy birthday, Mort. Thanks for inspiring generations of cartoonists with your talents!