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