Mad Art: A Visual Celebration of the Art of Mad Magazine and the Idiots Who Create It

by Mark Evanier

The year 2002 marks the 50th anniversary of MAD magazine, America's longest-running periodical of humour and satire. Throughout its long history, one of the most immediate, defining, and influential aspects of MAD has been its unique art; the magazine is a treasury of illustrated humour. #FDMAD Art is an hilarious look at five decades of America's premiere showcase for parody, satire and wit. All of MAD's usual gang of idiots are represented, beginning with Harvey Kurtzman and Will Elder, and continuing on through more recent Idiots like Richard Williams and Hermann Mejia.

Genres: Humor, Art, History, Comics

304 pages, Paperback

Published January 30, 2003

About the author

Mark Stephen Evanier is an American comic book and television writer, particularly known for his humor work.

Reviews

[Stephen · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was a nice peek back at my misspent youth. I thumbed through this mainly for the art and did not particularly find the text compelling. It was mostly a pat-eachother-on-the-back piece. While it was refreshig to learn that the current crop of artists and writers were not completely talentless, it has to be said they they simply cannot hold a candle to the great ones from the 50-70s. Mad hasn't been good enough for adults to read since the 80s. That's a lot of time to mold/train some artists to produce better work.

[Michael Martin · Rating 3 out of 5]

This deserves to be a book I would keep, as I am a longtime fan of MAD Magazine’s talented artists (Mort Drucker, Sergio Aragones, Don Martin, Jack Davis, etc.). But the design of the book, with ugly unnecessarily bold text choices, and horrific reproduction quality on much of the line art, leaves much to be desired. I am a bit shocked that a production artist wouldn’t have stepped in and pointed out how poor the quality of the images were.
I certainly don’t plan on keeping my copy.

[Josephus FromPlacitas]

Angelar pointed out, to my great embarrassment, just how boy-centric the entire publication is/was. But, but, but, but there's a girl artist profiled on page 246! See! She gets two whole columns of type and one almost medium-sized illustration! Progress is being made! Comics are no longer a mono-gendered ghetto of social outcasts whose only way of feeling superior to someone else is by excluding girls! I swear!

Actually, I didn't get drawn in to reading this partly because the whole thing looks like about a hundred or so 1-to-4-page profiles of Mad Magazine artists past and present. It's adulatory and reverential and not all that interesting to me right now. There's plenty of art from lots of different artists, so that's neat, but it's just nowhere as good reading a bunch of issues or a collection of the real thing.

Also, coming back as an adult to read the mediocre patter that got churned out in movie parody after movie parody can be a little disappointing sometimes.

[Sharon · Rating 2 out of 5]

I confess I was reading this more for the cartoons, than who the artists were, but that being said, it was a insightful book into the people who push the pens that make up mad. (Where are the women though??)
If your a mad magazine fan, this is a good book

[Shanejohnson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great collection of artists.

[Ericka Coello · Rating 5 out of 5]

Quiero tener el talento de cualquiera de esos manes que dibujan en la MAD y le vendieron su alma al diablo. Verdaderamente.