The evolution of outrage, by Mike Gold
Running Press Book Publishers released a 1,200 page, 15 pound tome called The Completely MAD Don Martin, reprinting all the work Don Martin did for Mad Magazine, back when in the days Mad was a force to be reckoned with.
That means it upset our parents.
That function must necessarily pass from one venue to another. Mad pretty much owned that turf from its inception in 1954 until the mid-60s. It passed on to its own children: the underground cartoonists. They, in turn, begat Matt Groening. Remember when The Simpsons was going to bring down civilization as we knew it – you know, 18 seasons ago? Then Mike Judge and Beavis and Butthead were going to burn your house down. South Park was too obscene for late-night cable teevee. As Kurt Vonnegut (another candidate for this list) famously said: So it goes.
I first encountered Don Martin when I was eight years old: my sister had discovered Mad and I had discovered my sister’s comics stash. Whereas his artistic style was in the spirit of the time, sort of Virgil Partch crossed with Basil Wolverton, his intrinsic bizarreness leapt off the page and attached itself to my obdula oblongata. It shaped my worldview… which probably explains a lot.
The feature was called “The Paper-Pickers” and it was about two sanitation workers picking up scrap in the park. One is a virtuoso of his craft who can spear paper with aplomb. The other is jealous. Why, I don’t know. The virtuoso is doing all the work; the other guy is just taking a walk on a nice summer day. But the competitive spirit prevails, and the also-ran flips out, spears the virtuoso to death and stuffs him in his refuse bag with a smile of evil satisfaction that would frighten Hannibal Lecter after a nice meal.
It was the funniest thing I had seen in my young life. Of course, this was a year before Rocky and His Friends debuted. The gag was slightly funny in an extremely warped way, but it looked absolutely hilarious. It was the art that made it funny – and therein lurked the secret of Don Martin.
As Mark Evanier pointed out in his brilliant history Mad Art, after the artist’s initial years at the magazine editor Al Feldstein started hiring ghost-writers for Don. Without taking anything away from the efforts of such gifted collaborators as Don Edwing (noted by Mark as the most frequent writer), it was still Don Martin’s work. It was the art that was “the funny;” the writing and the situation were merely the excuse.
Martin left Mad twenty years ago in a dispute with publisher Bill Gaines. By that time he was virtually blind and suffered from a highly unsteady hand – his latter work at Cracked just didn’t look the same. But the 30 years he spent at Mad were priceless.
Don Martin died in 2000. Of course, that was a shame and a great loss, but I’m saddened that he didn’t live to see this amazing tribute to his work. I can’t help but wonder if Don’s first thought might have been this: “I wonder if this 15 pound book will fall off the shelf and brain its owner.”
Glunk!
Mike Gold is editor-in-chief of ComicMix.
Discovered Don Martin via MAD around the same time I picked up on Spike Jones (and kindred artists Red Ingle and Mickey Katz) and Homer & Jethro and Stan Freberg. All provide workable demonstrations of constructive anarchy (as opposed to nihilism), and all remain perfectly capable of holding up into the present day — although Martin remains his own self-sufficient frame of reference.A fuller appreciation of Spike Jones, for example, requires more than a passing familiarity with the straight-faced pop-tune and classical compositions that his arrangers would lampoon. Red Ingle's hoedown overhaul of Paganini's "Moto Perpetuo" might sound merely weird to ears unaccustomed to the genuine article; Ingle compounded the spoof by calling it "Pagan Ninny's Keep 'Er Goin' Stomp."Favorite Martin 'toon here involves a gents'-room paper-towel dispenser bearing these instructions: "Pull Down — Tear Up," or words to that effect. You can take the gag from there. I noticed a dispenser bearing those very words last week at a Borders store … been backflashing to that Don Martin gag ever since.My Dad was a big-time admirer of Virgil "VIP" Partch but never could make the leap to Don Martin. I've always held both artists in more-or-less equal esteem, although of course VIP seems as safe as milk by comparison with prime Martin.
Have you seen the hot air dryers with the wavy lines above an outline of a hand? We call those "bacon dispensers."
Wow. "Bacon dispensers." Hadn't heard that one, but it sure-enough applies. So here's Don Martin's Fester Bestertester, hands outstretched in front of the dryer, waiting impatiently for that hot air to finish cooking his bacon…
And in a commercial last night, I saw the Dyson Airblade*. *http://www.dysonairblade.com/ in case the html is still down.
That Dyson Airblade looks like a convection oven for a rump roast. Scary name, too. What would Don Martin make of such technological marvels?
First, MAD premiered in 1952, not '54 (though it transitioned to magazine, as opposed to comic, form in early '55).Second, i was already aware of Don Martin from illos in SFC magazines {"Galaxy", at least, where he illustrated Scortia's "The Bomb in the Bathtub" [huh – i was sure that was Sheckley, but i just looked it up…] in 1957,, and, i think, one of the "Triple A Ace Planetary Decontamination Services" stories, and Pohl's "Knights of Arthur", as i recall just offhand…} years before i evere saw him in"MAD"
The "pull down, tear up" gag is one of my favorites. Then there's the one with the guy who gets run over by the steam roller, and his distraught friends fold up his flattened body, presumably to cart him off to the hospital for emergency treatment or something, only to be interrupted by a body builder who thinks the folded up body is a phone book…But nothing comes close to National Gorilla Suit Day.
You betcha — National Gorilla Suit Day. The WAR AND PEACE and/or TALE OF TWO CITIES of the gag comics. Something like that.
As Rick well knows, National Gorilla Suit Day is my favorite as well. He knows because back in the 1980s, I threw a gorilla suit-themed party. Peter B. Gillis came dressed as Frank Nitti; brilliant.
Yes, and one never forgets one's first Gorilla Suit, finer new models notwithstanding. Mine was fashioned from a great big stuffed-toy ape won at the Tri-State Fair's carnival midway, with a water-filled beach ball for abdominal ballast. Inspired as much by Don Martin's magnificent story as by the gorilla-suit movies of Charles Gemora and Ray Corrigan. No need to wait for a costume party — just climb into the thing and go lumbering about annoying the neighbors. "Arargh," indeed!