Wednesday, June 19, 2013

Get well quick to my fellow Madman, Eddie

My friend, Eddie, is not feeling too well these days. He’s having some medical problems that we all hope can be taken care of soon. Ed and I met through the old Prodigy service, in 1992, when both we and computer technology were young. We introduced ourselves on a DOS-based bulletin board devoted to EC Comics and specifically Mad, of which we were both lifetime fans.

Eddie, like me, loves the inspired craziness of editor/writer Harvey Kurtzman and artist Will (then known as Bill) Elder.  The title of Eddie’s blog, Chicken Fat, comes from the old Mad comics.

Here’s one of my favorite Mad stories, a spoof called “Frank N. Stein!” I scanned it from a comic book called The Nostalgic Mad. From 1972 through 1980 the publishers of Mad magazines produced eight issues reprinting the best of the classic comic book Mad, which they bound into their issues of Mad Special. This is from issue #15, 1974.

I hope it’ll help Eddie on his road to recovery. Get well soon, Ed!


Copyright © 1974, 2013 E. C. Publications, Inc.










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2 comments:

  1. Kirk9:02 AM

    I had that Mad Super-Special as a kid. I grew up with Al Feldstein's version of Mad, and so only found out about Harvey Kurtzman through those super specials. I always tried, unsucessfully, to pull those comic book inserts out intact, even though the magazine itself warned me not to. I believe they said I'd end up with a handful of torn paper, which is exactly what happened.

    The recent hard cover compilation TOTALLY MAD has several chapters inspersed throughout the book written by the great song parodist Frank Jacobs, where he describes, in mostly straightforward fashion, the inner-workings of the magazine. Curiously, he barely mentions Kurtzman and Feldstein and focuses almost entirely on William Gaines. Not sure what to make of that.

    All this comes as a bit of a coincidence, as I have a Harvey Kurtzman post rolling around in my brain, that I hope to bring to fruition sometimes before this summer ends.

    Hope your friend Eddie gets better.

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  2. Postino5:25 AM

    Thanks, Kirk. I also dared to remove the comics from the magazine, and at least one of them was damaged. Years after the fact I found a couple of the Mad Specials with the comics still intact, and by then was smart enough to leave them alone.

    The reason Frank Jacobs mainly mentioned Gaines is that he wrote a book, The Mad World of William M. Gaines, which I believe is a source of the material used in the Totally Mad book (I don't have the book, so I'm guessing.)

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