MADness #148: Mort the Master!

We’ve reached another milestone in our ongoing trek looking back at my career with MAD, but this is one of the depressing ones. I both wrote and drew this two pager for the ongoing feature “The Wisenheim Museum” for MAD #15, Aug 2020.  This piece was significant for me for several reasons.

It was the first piece I ever both drew AND wrote for the magazine. I’d do one more a few years later (another remembrance sort of piece), but at the time this was a first for me. It came about when following the passing of the great Mort Drucker in April of 2020, MAD art director/editor/pretty-much-everything-else Suzy Hutchinson contacted me about doing a caricature of Mort sort of like the one I did of Al Jaffee in MAD #14 (see the last episode of this series for that art). MAD #14 was too far into production to include any Mort tributes in that issue, and #14 was a full issue tribute to Jaffee anyway. This art would be for #15, presumably part of a larger tribute with many contributors.

After #14 was in the can Suzy asked if I would do something bigger, like a two page “Wisenheim Museum” piece. I would need to write it as well, because the entire idea behind “The Wisenheim Museum” was to have a single cartoonist/comics creator pay tribute to either a particular feature of MAD, MAD in general, or one of the long-time UGOIs who was an inspiration to them. I had written a blog post after Mort’s passing that Suzy liked, so that became the jumping off point for this piece. I also came up with the concept of drawing Mort at his drawing board, and then caricatures of some of the almost uncountable number of people he had drawn in the magazine reading the issue that he drew them in. I also wanted to include “Bob and Ray”, and a young collection of the staff from the time Mort started with MAD with a nod to the famous Bill Gaines story about how Mort getting the job depended on if the Dodgers won the game that was on when Mort showed his portfolio.  I agonized over this assignment and considered several approaches and concepts before coming up with this. It was tricky to do this because all of these celebrities were iconically caricatured by Mort, and I wanted to be sure I didn’t channel him much in my own versions.

I’m sorry to say this piece caused some consternation with Mort’s family. I had contacted his daughters asking for some pictures of Mort at various ages, explaining that I was doing a piece in tribute to their dad. They sent me several great pics, although I ended up using one I got off the internet for my main reference. After the piece was published I offered to send them a print of it if they wanted it. That’s when I found out they were unhappy that MAD published a tribute to their father that featured none of his artwork, but the artwork of another MAD artist. They were very nice about it, making sure I knew they held me blameless and that they knew how much I respected and loved their dad. They just felt it was not a fitting tribute to him in the magazine.

They clearly did not understand what “The Wisenheim Museum” feature was and how it was not a tribute from MAD or DC but from me personally. Other Wisenheim Museum pieces over the last few years featured tributes to Basil Wolverton, Wally Wood, Alfred, and MAD itself by the likes of Ron English, Jim Woodring, Mitch O’Connell, Bill Wray, Rick Tulka and others. This was meant to be that. I would have pointed this out but they did have a point in that my two pager was the ONLY tribute to Mort in issue #15. That sort of did make it the defacto MAD tribute, even though that’s not what it was meant to be. MAD really should have had several other pages in #15 dedicated to Mort, featuring some of his greatest art and tribute remarks by some of the surviving long-time UGOI. In fact a full “Mort Drucker” issue would have been the best thing to do. I was sorry that Mort’s family were not pleased.

The other significant thing about this piece was that I thought it might be my last for MAD. With the publication of this in MAD #15, I had done art for every issue of the magazine since #495, November 2008. That’s a span of twelve years and 71 consecutive issues with some new piece of artwork by me in it. Kids that started first grade when #495 came out were graduating from high school when #15 dropped. That’s a long time. I had no assignment for issue #16. Or #17. Or #18. It really did look like it was over.

That proved not to be the case. I have done some piece of art, either cover or interior, for twelve issues since. That’s twelve out of 30 issues, so it’s been sporadic. The good news is that there’s been an increase in new content in the magazine over the last three issues. Issue #45 drops next week, and that will be three in a row I’ll have done something for. If I can keep it up, I’ll beat my 71 issue streak with #113 in 2036!

Toon in soon for another step on the road of MADness!