Captain Klutz Day!

Don Martin was born on yesterday's date in 1931. Martin was a key member of the "Usual Gang of Idiots", the talents who delivered MAD Magazine for decades. Like many others I'm sure, Martin is my favorite MAD talent. Martin fell out with MAD and switched over to CRACKED Magazine in 1987, immediately raising the level of that rag. 

When folks think of the classic MAD, they might almost immediately think of Don Martin. Martin's people look like no one you've ever seen and yet he successfully in his abstraction captures that every man which nestles in the heart of us all. When his characters act stupidly it is a stupidity we can sadly likely identify with. The Don Martin gags were always the first thing I checked out in a new issue of MAD, scampering through the pages to find the two or more likely three installments. After that it was time other things, but it was always Martin first. When Don Martin left MAD for places, for a time at Cracked and later with his own short-lived magazine, he was always instantly recognizable. Martin seemed to have some fine success in the paperback arena, and one regret I definitely have is that over the many years I've read and collected comics and such, I never made much of a point of chasing the MAD paperbacks, especially the Don Martin collections. Captain Klutz needs a new edition especially.

Some years ago they published all of Martin's MAD cartoons in two super-size volumes and I was lucky to stumble across it for relatively small money. The slip-covered collection a treasure and now that I think of it, one I haven't examined in far too long. Maybe when I finish this post, I'll dig it out for a few laughs. Don Martin was always good for that.

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Favorite MAD Artist Countdown #2 - Don Martin!

When folks think of the classic MAD, they might almost immediately think of Don Martin. Martin's people look like no one you've ever seen and yet he successfully in his abstraction captures that every man which nestles in the heart of us all. When his characters act stupidly it is a stupidity we can sadly likely identify with. The Don Martin gags were always the first thing I checked out in a new issue of MAD, scampering through the pages to find the two or more likely three installments. After that it was time other things, but it was always Martin first. When Don Martin left MAD for places, for a time at Cracked and later with his own short-lived magazine, he was always instantly recognizable. Martin seemed to have some fine success in the paperback arena, and one regret I definitely have is that over the many years I've read and collected comics and such, I never made much of a point of chasing the MAD paperbacks, especially the Don Martin collections. Captain Klutz needs a new edition especially.

Some years ago they published all of Martin's MAD cartoons in two super-size volumes and I was lucky to stumble across it for relatively small money. The slip-covered collection a treasure and now that I think of it, one I haven't examined in far too long. Maybe when I finish this post, I'll dig it out for a few laughs. Don Martin was always good for that.

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MAD Stocking Stuffer!

I have been reintroduced to the irreverent mirth of MAD this past year, since the reboot of the vintage EC series, now part of DC's sprawling collection of publications. This delightful though admittedly somewhat expensive package features some of the classic MAD material by veteran MAD men and new MAD men alike. This is actually a re-issue of a 2017 tome. With art from the likes of Don Martin, Dave Berg, Sergio Aragones, Al Jaffee and Paul Coker it feels like proper MAD to me.

And somehow my mood these days makes me happy that the eternally irreverent mug of Alfred E. Neuman is leering out at one and all this Christmas Day.

Here are few more classic covers.

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Don Martin Steps Out!

There's no doubt in my mind that the biggest artist news ever in the history of comic books was when Jack "King" Kirby left his creations at Marvel and turned his attentions to DC where he created the awesome Fourth World.

That's the winner, but second on my personal list is when longtime MAD artist Don Martin, often labeled the "Maddest Artist" of all left the magazine to take up residence at its number one competitor Cracked.

Don Martin's offerings were always the ones I checked out first in an issue of MAD when I'd get my grubby mitts on one. It went like this usually -- Don Martin pages, Al Jaffee fold-out (without folding), Sergio Aragones pages, then onto other things like Dave Berg, and the satires by Angelo Torres and Mort Drucker. But whatever was in the mag, it was always Martin first. Then he left and his last page was the one above in MAD #277 (see the cover below).

In a few months (newsstand time) Cracked bellowed its acquisition with the greatest of tease by showcasing the great Don Martin on the cover of Cracked #235, something relatively rare in his long MAD career.

The story of how Cracked got Martin can be found here (at least in part) in a column by then Cracked editor Mort Todd. The truth is usually more complicated than one person's perception of it, but this rendering of the tale seems straightforward enough. Like Jack Kirby before him, Martin left for a lot of reasons, but mostly I suspect it was because he felt disrespected by the folks who had been making some good profit off his work for many years. Pride of self can make men and women do a lot they'd prefer not to do.

I picked up the awesomely large two-volume Don Martin MAD collection several years ago. I found it so ridiculously cheap I could not resist despite its mammoth stature. I need to get it out and keep it handy for those moments I need a laugh or two. Don Martin was always great for that.

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Hero-A-Go-Go!

I knew I wanted this one when I first clapped my eyeballs on it. Twomorrow's Hero-A-Go-Go explores the zany stuff that was rolling around on the spinner racks when I was a wee fan first snapping up comics. My notion of what a superhero is has always been pretty broad, because the heroes of this era span quite a broad spectrum. We have fully outlandish and absolutely absurd and brazenly bizarrely strange, but also exceedingly cool. The book takes a lovingly nostalgic look at some of my favorite comics, many dubbed by the "critics" as really really bad. But to my thinking these are comics which are so bad (in some instances) that they pop out the other side of the continuum of criticism and pop out the other end as in fact good.  Normally Michael Eury digs into the Bronze Age, that period after Kirby left Marvel and many of the publishers of the 60's had pulled back if not completely disappeared, but here it's the Silver Age which gets his full and undivided attention. Your mileage will greatly vary greatly depending on tastes, but to give you a notion of the wildness and utter weirdness contained in this hefty tome, check out the covers below.

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