Description
“To me, Mort’s the guy. I used to imitate his work in MAD when I was a kid. I wanted to be Mort Drucker. I even loved his name.”
— Drew Friedman*
Mort Drucker (1929–2020), the legendary caricaturist for MAD, began in comics at age 18, assisting Bert Whitman on his popular newspaper strip Debby Dean. Whitman recognized Drucker’s nascent genius, and urged him to seek employment at DC Comics, where he was hired to retouch art and assist the staff. As Drucker began to hone his caricature skills, he started to draw his own comic figures, creating covers and interiors for humorous DC titles like Jackie Gleason & The Honeymooners, The Adventures of Bob Hope, and The Adventures of Jerry Lewis.
When comic book sales plunged in the late 1950s, work in the field was hard to find. Drucker spotted an ad placed by MAD in the New York Times seeking new contributors. Against over 300 applicants, and although MAD already had a full line-up of artists (the “Usual Gang of Idiots”), Drucker was hired. Soon Mort’s lavish yet subtle and unparalleled attention to facial expressions, including their flaws and quirks, as well as his meticulous background details, made his monthly movie and TV parodies the magazine’s defining centerpiece. They became the gold standard of quality caricature.
Drucker drew around 2,000 pages of art for MAD, and his work has been featured on countless magazine and book covers, record albums, film posters, and in advertising. He continues to have a profound influence on generations of young artists. His iconic signature was a work of art in itself.
