HOW ART SET MAD MAGAZINE FREE

Compare these two cartoons from MAD about father/son relationships.  The first is by Jack Davis:

The second is by Mort Drucker:

The first joke is a wisecrack using generic cartoon characters. The second joke involves a different kind of visual humor. It uses sharp observations about the personalities of the father and son: contrast the thick, rough lines used for the father with the delicate lines of the meek son; note how the angle of the picture points us right to the boy's upturned face and frail shoulders. The father’s cigar in his immense paw is a prop strategically placed in the foreground. The father's "smile" is misshapen from years of chomping on those cigars.

We know nothing about the lives of the father or son in the Davis cartoon but it doesn't matter; the joke doesn't depend on it. On the other hand, Drucker’s drawing tells us everything about this boy's life and the life of his father.

The first cartoon could've been drawn by any of the artists in MAD's talented stable.  The second cartoon could only have been drawn by Drucker.

MAD's evolution from the first type of joke to the second type of joke is the story of how art set MAD free.

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MAD started as a ten cent comic book, containing mostly silly spoofs of other comics or movies. It had an excellent collection of artists such as Davis, Wally Wood and Will Elder but its content remained mostly slapstick. MAD couldn't graduate to a more challenging and relevant form of humor until it acquired a different kind of artistic talent– a talent capable of handling a wider range of facial expressions, psychological staging and body language, of cultural and political references. 

This doesn't mean the early MAD art wasn't wonderful and hilarious. My point is that the new drawing ability gave MAD's writers a vehicle for more ambitious humor with far greater range.

MAD moved from Superduperman to questioning authority around the kitchen table...

... and from questioning authority around the kitchen table to questioning the veracity of TV commercials or even Presidents of the United States. It was this new, more mature brand of humor that was primarily responsible for transforming MAD into the inspiration for The National Lampoon and Saturday Night Live. Terry Gilliam (of Monty Python) said, "MAD became the Bible for me and my whole generation." Its irreverence conquered America.

Consider some of the fruits of MAD's new artistic reach:

Drucker’s version of West Side Story was not a satire of the movie, but rather a story about a street gang rumble between the communist eastern block nations and the democratic western nations. Drucker had to draw recognizable caricatures of dictators dressed as juvenile delinquents, dancing in front of photos of the United Nations. Earlier MAD artists couldn't do this.

The movie, Fiddler on the Roof was converted into Antenna on the Roof, a commentary about the culture shock of Jewish families who came to America and found "success" to be a mixed blessing. Earlier MAD artists could never support such a story.

Drucker's drawings were crucial to introducing young readers to strange new settings, some of them real and some of them not so much.   For example, Drucker's drawing of a crowded wedding buffet (below) helped readers understand a world they might not have personally experienced but which nevertheless rang true.

Or look at how Drucker takes us to the other side of the world, showing the plight of laborers crowded into the hull of a 19th century southeast Asian steamer ship:

Or into a frontier saloon.  Note the gilded tacky decor and the ornate cash register:

MAD readers were transported into hundreds of such scenes, made more believable by Drucker's details.  And this is the crucial point: Drucker believed that accurate drawing would make the most preposterous premises seem more real.  He felt that if he followed the laws of realism most of the time when it came to anatomy, perspective, time, space and gravity, he might buy himself a longer leash when it came to strange and loony situations.  

Drucker: making the nutty drawings believable by alternating them with accurate ones.

Mad became great and influential by offering a menu of talented artists and writers working in a variety of styles.  Some fans will always love Don Martin more and some will always love Wally Wood.  

But it seems to me that MAD became a more formidable cultural force not because its writers suddenly became smarter or more talented; it was because the quality of the art suddenly enabled the writers to present smarter, more talented ideas.  Art was always the pathogen that carried MAD's humor and made it so infectious, spreading rapidly from schoolchild to schoolchild around the world.  Once the art was good enough to host a wider range of content, it set MAD's humor free to infect the world.