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'Just an experiment to see if I could "glue" two halves of a picture together in a single post.
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| This is my favorite Mad cover ever. Buyers must have felt that they got their money's worth just for the cover, and everything inside was free. I can't wait to see how this will interfere with the right sidebar. Don't blame Blogger. It's my fault...I want to watch the collision. |
A nice cultural history test would consist of coming up with names for all the people in Jack Davis's cover. I was 10 in 1956 and was just becoming aware of politics and world affairs; I remember being glued to the convention coverage - so I was there at the birth of Huntley-Brinkley. Anyway, the faces I can make out and identify:
ReplyDeleteDouglas MacArthur, Thomas E. Dewey, Mao Tse-Tung, Chou En-Lai, Georgi Malenkov, Viatcheslav Molotov, Nikolai Bulganin, Nikita Khruschev, Averell Harriman, Adlai Stevenson, John Foster Dulles, Estes Kefauver, Alfred E. Newman, Richard Nixon, Marilyn Monroe, Jane Russell, Gina Lollobrigida, Winston Churchill, Anthony Eden, Queen Elizabeth II, Casey Stengel, Juan Peron, King Farouk.
I don't know where my copy is, so I had to go by a slightly sharper but no larger scan I found online.
Actually, my favorite part of those early MAD covers was Will Elder's border; man, how I loved scrutinizing that thing for teeny detail and hidden gags.
Bursting at the seams with fun! Just like your blog!
ReplyDeleteI love how overpopulated the old MAD comics were... no one's really shown how they were influenced by the Marx bros. yet, but it would be an easy comparison to make.
ReplyDeleteWhat. A. Cover! Thats all a can say.
ReplyDeleteThat cover is beautiful. The old Mad artists really gave you your moneys worth! The pictures were cluttered, but I like them that way. You can stare at the drawings forever, and find new funny characters, or weird things in the crowds.
ReplyDeleteThe new blog look is great! I really love the wood panelling...but the words are bleeding out of the edges, along with the pictures. It's hard to read...just thought you should know.
Steve, Rooni: Haw! Many thanks!
ReplyDeletePaul: Holy Cow! You're a lot better at spotting people than I am! And the border of that magazine really is amazing!
Sharp, Paul: The Marx Bros.? Everybody was influenced by them. The Will elder border on the cover was probably influenced by British and French illustrators of the 19th Century. Maybe by thomas Nast, too.
Josh: I thought you said you like clutter! Most of the clutter here has been deliberate so far. It's unfortunate that it makes the text hard to read, but it seems funny to me somehow. I could resolve the problem just by posting smaller pictures or manipulating the sidebar, but then I wouldn't get the adreniline rush of seeing a new collision everytime I post.
I like the new design overall, but it's out of control. Makes your well thought out ideas seem jumbled. The collision of art and type looks like a mistake to me. Just my opinion.
ReplyDeleteThat cover is epic. I'll never be able to draw a tenth this well. Crowd scenes are painful to draw without it looking like crap.
ReplyDeleteOne of Davis's best gags was showing General MacArthur just in outline, referring to his famous quote, "Old soldiers never die, they just fade away."
ReplyDeleteI'm on Firefox with a 1280x1026 resolution on my monitor, and it's not gluing together for me very well. I find it useful to always scale things in to be about 800 pixels wide to fit everything into the reading area.
ReplyDeleteThat said, that cover is absolutely fantastic. I'm going to search and see if I can find it in a better resolution because I can't make out as much as I'd like in it. I like how it's really full without seeming overcrowded. It's really an incredible skill to have.
Ian: You couldn't see it glued together because i couldn't make it do that in the composing box. Finally I gave up and wrote a caption under the upper half. I still believe it might be possible. I'll try again some other time.
ReplyDeleteCraig: I'm still tinkering with it. I appreciate the comment.
Geez, Eddie, that cover is like your blog in image form! You're so lucky you had this kind of formative influence on your mind. Mad Magazine sucked when I was a kid.
ReplyDeleteIt made me realize that your blog is a cross between Mad Magazine, Poor Richard's Almanac and Playboy.