Here's another example of the early Don Martin style. The foreground guy looks soooo grungy! How do you like the Virgil Partch-type rake fingers? How about the class clown way of drawing shoulders high up around the ears? I love a good set-up and this one is a classic: an intense, miserable guy is observed by an ecstatically happy guy with an ear-to-ear grin. It's the time-honored collision of an optimist with a pessimist (he's not really a pessimist but the word fits the point I'm trying to make). You can feel the electricity in the air!
When you think about it, a lot of comedy is about the collision between two different personality types. Cartooning does it better than live action because we can push the caricature farther. It's puzzling that so many TV cartoons don't seem to realize this. You see so many shows with similar characters who all hang around with each other. There's no conflict, no electricity.
Anyway, how do you like the way the happy guy taps on the other guy's back? Martin doesn't make a big deal about it but it's worth commenting on because tapping is funny. It means the nosey, intrusive tapper is invading your space and touching the precious membrane that holds your guts inside. Pecking is funny. Peck frequently, in real life and on the page.
The grinning guy pulls a bottle out of his jacket and the pickled guy downs it. He's a grunge ball troll and he knows it. He has nothing to lose. The swallow pose is great and I love the way the rake fingers enfold the glass.
Another virtuoso swallow followed by a moment of internal awareness.
Here's (above) the ending where all the characters grin at the reader. The soda water has made them blissfully happy! Of course this is a fake ad but it manages to communicate what it is that I like about real ads, namely that they promise happiness to anyone who afford the right toothpaste... which is just about everybody.
Buying happiness for a dollar is simultaneously funny, shallow and profound. Am I the only one who agreed with the hero's end speech in the film, "How to Get Ahead in Advertising?"
I also love the little detail at the end... Seems like a very subtle yet interesting criticism: his hair's already going back to normal.
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ReplyDeleteIt's Frued's nephews fault. Blame Edward Bernays for Inventing the concept of "The Happiness Machine"
ReplyDeleteThe IPhone being the most recent version of same.
Don Martin is the emperor of cartoons
ReplyDelete!!!!!!!! That's hilarious!!!!!!!!! I love his version of suave men, they're so happy, and cocksure!
ReplyDeleteThose drawings kill me. Seriously.
Kali said Cock
ReplyDeleteYou just said cock too, Vincent! Ha!
ReplyDeleteYou should do another post on Kliban Eddie, theres a man whos drawings dripped with misanthropy
ReplyDeleteI love that cartoon. I have this in a copy of the book called "MAD About the Fifties" which has a lot classic MAD pieces, starting with Harvey Kurtzman. I love Don Martin's cartoons. They're absolutely hilarious. Great cartooning. I love your blog Uncle Eddie. Vive la Uncle Eddie
ReplyDeletethe construction in these drawings are a lot harder to figure out than his new stuff . Its like the difference between Milt Grosscomics and animation
ReplyDeleteholy crap! these drawings are hilarious thanks for posting them!
ReplyDelete"Am I the only one who agreed with the hero's end speech in the film, 'How to Get Ahead in Advertising?'"
ReplyDeleteNo Eddie, you aren't. I thought that speech was brilliant.
I think that reading this at the tender age of 7 is one of the reasons I don't drink today. Those faces he made when slamming the drinks down freaked me out.
ReplyDeleteOne of the things about MAD Magazine that's interesting is how much Bill Gaines (the publisher for many years, until he passed away, ca. the late 80s/early 90s) used to hammer at the advertising industry; one of the ironies, of course, being that the magazine was headquartered for decades on Madison (or, if you prefer, MADison) Avenue, the longtime home of the industry.
ReplyDeleteNearly every book collection of MAD from the 50s or 60s, and even well into the 1970s, has at least one shot at the advertising industry, which could range from the Don Martin pokes here (at then-contemporary ads for Schweppes Tonic Water, KLM Airlines, and medicine ads in general), to material that actually explained how advertisers were trying to fool consumers with boasting about size, packaging, and such.
(And readers from the 1970s will well remember that Gaines & Co. were far ahead of the curve regarding smoking.)
Yet another example, I think, of how high MAD shot in its glory days. To be sure, Don Martin's stuff here is very funny...but there's a serious subtext that puts a real twist on things. The mark, I think, of what separates merely funny drawings from authentic satire.
When Kliban died, his cats ate him.
ReplyDeleteVincent: Thanks a million for the Bernays reference. I never heard of him before so I looked him up on Wikipedia. It turns out that I already read one of his books, the one on propoganda. It was a great book.
ReplyDeleteI still remember his dictum: never try to get your enemy to change his mind, rather reinforce what he wants to believe already that is to your advantage.
I like applying this to selling soap because it's funny and harmless and makes life more fun for everybody. I don't like it when it's applied to serious things like politics. Spin control and all that makes me nausous. The people who follow Bernays' advice in this area strike me as immoral.
Anon: Good idea. I love Kliban's best work.
Erik: That's an under-rated film. I wish I had a copy of it.
EO: The problem is that over time the magazine began to be too heavy-handed in its criticism.
ReplyDelete>>Am I the only one who agreed with the hero's end speech in the film, "How to Get Ahead in Advertising?"
ReplyDeleteThat's one of my favorite films, too. I wonder, though, what you mean when you say you agreed with the "hero's" climatic speech? That speech was meant to be ironic, and it was delivered by the boil/villian who, by that point, crushed the last shred of decency in the protagonist.
Hunsecker: As you said, the speech was meant to be ironic but I still agreed with some of it. Advertizing has been very good to artists and it's given a lot of free radio and TV to the public. Not only that, It's funny.
ReplyDeleteAnd yet his hair still looks bad! How disappointing!
ReplyDeleteI didn’t quite understand the speech at the end of How to Get Ahead in Advertising. However, I was much younger when I saw it (back in 1994 or so) and I think was also coping with the fact that I hadn’t expected it to be so dark and not really a parody of advertising.
I remember liking the line “Don’t pretend you haven’t noticed my cardboard box, Julia, because I know you have.”