Will Elder

Will Elder

$175.00

8 in stock

Only ten (10) prints of WILL ELDER were produced for this 2011 Special Edition. Each print is signed in the lower right by the artist, hand-titled in the center, and numbered in the lower left (all beneath the image).

The image area is 15″ high x 11-1/2″ wide centered on an untrimmed 19″ x 13″ sheet. Paper, ink, and production specifications, as well as shipping details, are available on our PRINT SPECS page.

Prices will increase for subsequent prints as the edition depletes. Purchase price does not include shipping costs, which are calculated during checkout.

Category:

Description

Drew Friedman rendered this portrait of legendary cartoonist Will Elder (1921-2008), one of the granddaddies of subversive comics and one of Friedman’s artistic heroes. Elder, along with Wally Wood, was a manic force on the pages of MAD when it launched as a comic book under Harvey Kurtzman in the early 1950s. (See Drew’s portraits of Wood, Kurtzman, and Al Jaffee, also available as limited edition fine art prints.)

Elder, who had a unique gift for visual mimicry, often concocted savage parodies of tame mainstream strips (e.g., Mickey Mouse, Archie, Gasoline Alley). His panels were dotted with background gags and peripheral gremlins making absurd secondary dialogue. In 1957 Elder and Kurtzman left MAD to partner on several short-lived humor magazines, including Trump, Humbug, and Help! In 1962, he launched (with Kurtzman) the bawdy Little Annie Fanny series, which ran in Playboy until 1988.

A collection of his work, Will Elder: The Mad Playboy of Art, was published by Fantagraphics in 2003.