For True Art, Look to Your Elder

Last week we lost Will Elder, comic artist and one of the original contributers to Mad magazine. For the kids in the audience, Mad, before it was a television sketch comedy, was a very funny satiric magazine a long time ago. Okay, they actually still make Mad magazine, but I gave up on over a decade ago, in part because of Mr. Elder.

Now, if you try hard enough, you can find compilations of the old Mad spoofs penned by Elder, and his were always my favorite by a mile. Not only could he do a perfect caricature, but he was responsible for my favorite parts of the comics, which was the over-the-top content in the background, which he referred to as "chicken fat". You could read through the actual comic storyline in about ten minutes, and then spend twenty more looking at all the jokes he had slipped into the background.

Here's an example of one of his pages. Click the image to get the full size so you can see everything that's going on here:





Seriously, every single panel was full of this. As the action got underway, it wasn't as much, but almost every single panel had at least one bonus joke in there somewhere. It was amazing.

I discovered these in old Mad magazines my father had kept around. As time went on, I occasionally would pick up a current issue, but it could never live up to my expectations. I don't really blame the new artists, and I'm sure that some of it is probably funny, but after seeing something from a master, it's hard to appreciate anything less. So go out and try to find them, and failing that, do the digital thing and get them on the computer. For Elder's work alone, it would be money well spent.