Monday, May 15, 2017

Number 2049: Mort Drucker was also “Crazy”

Mort Drucker, born in 1929 (and as of this writing, still with us at age 88), was freelancing in comic books before he became a star for Mad in the fifties. This particular tale is from Atlas Comics’ Crazy #6 (1954). I have read a lot funnier stories drawn by Drucker over the past 50+ years. “Tall in the Saddle” seems a bit hurried. Maybe a tight deadline. I am showing it because Drucker’s early pre-Mad work was not lacking in some of the sophistication he later showed in that magazine.

Five years later Drucker did a Perry Mason parody for Mad that caught my attention. (See the link below.) I had seen his artwork before, but it was the story that showed me how good he was. Caricatured likenesses became his trademark.






The National Cartoonist Society has an excellent 40-minute conversation with Drucker. You can see it here. I hope they will keep the video online forever, but if not and you find a black space instead of a video, well, you have missed out!

Go back to 2011 for “Perry Masonmint”...just click on the thumbnail.

at

1 comment:

  1. Brian Barnes7:15 AM

    I think Drucker did a fine job on this. It's certainly different from his MAD work and some of this has a Davis vibe to it. Also, he could draw some pretty cartoonish girls, something he didn't do a lot of in his caricatured work.

    The script is a little poor on this one, and usually the Atlas MAD rip off stories were pretty good. The gun/teeth gag is funny, but a lot of it just falls flat. When I was a kid, the B&W humor magazines that survived were always ordered by #1 MAD, #2 Cracked, and #3 Crazy. Sorry, Marvel. Crazy was usually OK. Marvel never seemed to get a good grasp on that mag.

    ReplyDelete

I have gone to comments moderation to try to eliminate spam. Please be patient while I get to your comments for posting.