The Late Great Mort Drucker

Mort Drucker, who worked on movie and television show parodies for Mad magazine for literally decades, died on April 9 2020 at the age of 91.

Mort Drucker was born on March 22 1929 in Brooklyn, New York. He attended Erasmus High School.  While he was a talented artist from when he was young, he did not become serious about it until after he graduated high school. Comic book legend Will Eisner was a family friend, and it was on Mr. Eisner's recommendation that he was hired as an assistant to Bert Whitman on the comic strip Debbie Dean in 1947.

Afterwards he was hired by National Periodical Publications (even then known informally as "DC Comics") as a retoucher. At DC, Mort Drucker worked on a variety of titles including, the feature "Rancho Pancho" in Romance Trail. He also worked as a ghost on Paul Webb's single panel comic strip The Mountain Boys published in issues of Esquire. In 1950 he began freelancing for various comic book publishers, including St. John (where he worked on Abbot and Costello) andDell (where he worked on Western titles). At DC Comics he provided covers for Fox and the Crow.

It was in 1956 that Mort Drucker went to work for Mad magazine. His early work at Mad was often illustrating articles written by such comedic luminaries as Sid Caesar and Bob & Ray. He was the very first artist to illustrate Mad magazine's long running feature "Ads We'd Like to See." It was with a parody of the TV show Perry Mason, "The Night Perry Masonmint Lost a Case," published in Mad no. 48 (July 1959), that Mort Drucker's talent for parody was fully realized. The parody set the pace for every movie and TV show parody published in Mad afterwards. While movie and TV shows had been parodied in Mad before by such luminaries as Harvey Kurtzman, Jack Davis, and Will Elder, "The Night Perry Masonmint Lost a Case" established Mort Drucker as the magazine's parody artist of choice.

Mort Drucker also continued working for DC Comics. He worked on both The Adventures of Martin & Lewis (which later became The Adventures of Jerry Lewis) and The Adventures of Bob Hope, and other humour characters as Buzzy, Everything Happens to Harvey, Here's Howie, and Swing with Scooter. He worked on several war titles, including All-American Men of War, G.I. Combat, Our Army at War, Our Fighting Forces, and Star Spangled War Stories. He provided art for horror and science fiction titles, including House of Mystery, House of Secrets, Mystery in Space, Strange Adventures, and Tales of the Unexpected. At DC he also worked on All-Star Western, My Greatest Adventure, and Tomahawk.

Mort Drucker did a good deal of illustration beyond Mad and DC Comics. He illustrated children's books, as well as such political satire books as John F. Kennedy Coloring Book, The Ollie North Coloring Book, and Farewell Tribute to Ronald Reagan Coloring Book. He illustrated movie posters for the films Casino Royale (1967), It's Alive (1974), American Graffiti (1973) and Finders Keepers (1984). He created artwork for the opening credits of the short-lived Seventies series Syznick. He also illustrated album covers, including The Bears' self-titled debut album and Anthrax's State of Euphoria. He did illustrations for advertisements for Heinz Ketchup, Seagram's Vodka, the U.S. Postal Service, and Whirpool refrigerators, among others.

Between 1984 and 1986 Mort Drucker and James Dumas had their own syndicated gag strip titled Benchley, which centred on a fictional assistant of Ronald Reagan by that name. 

Mort Drucker retired from Mad in 2006, after fifty five years. This made him the artist with the longest uninterrupted run at the magazine. Of artists who did not write their own articles, Mort Drucker had more bylines in Mad than any other.

There can be no doubt that Mort Drucker was the master of celebrity parodies. He had a particular gift for caricaturing several celebrities all in one panel. What is more, he could capture the spirit of an celebrity in such a way that the celebrity was immediately recognisable. There was very little exaggeration in his work. What made Mort Drucker's movie and television show parodies even better is that they were very cinematic, with attention to angles, lighting, and other details. Mort Drucker was so good at what he did that he even had fans among the very celebrities he parodied. Both Speaker of the House Tip O'Neil and President Ronald Reagan were fans of his work on Benchley. Other cartoonists recognised Mr. Drucker's talent. Charles M. Schulz once said, that  he"...draws everything the way we would all like to draw." It was perhaps George Lucas who summed up Mort Drucker's long and acclaimed career best, calling him, "...the artist that defines Mad for me." There can be no doubt that Mort Drucker defined Mad for many others as well.