Will Elder
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
William Elder (aka Bill Elder) (born September 22, 1921 in the Bronx, New York) is an American illustrator and comic book artist who worked in numerous areas of commercial art yet is best known for a zany cartoon style that helped launch Harvey Kurtzman's Mad comic book in 1952. He was inducted into the Comic Book Hall of Fame in 2003.
Kurtzman and Elder met when they were students at Manhattan's High School of Music and Art. In the late 1940s, the two teamed with Charles Stern to form the Charles William Harvey Studio, creating comics between 1948 and 1951 for Prize Comics and other publishers. At EC Comics, he inked John Severin's pencils on stories for Weird Fantasy, Two-Fisted Tales, Frontline Combat and other titles.
When Kurtzman created Mad in 1952, Elder was one of the comic book's original team of five artists (Kurtzman, Elder, Severin, Jack Davis and Wally Wood). and his wacky panels, filled with background gags, immediately attracted attention, first with "Ganefs!" in Mad's debut issue but especially in the second issue with "Mole!" The story depicted the successive efforts of prisoner Melvin Mole to tunnel away from the prison, first with a spoon, then with a toothpick and finally with a nostril hair. The wild exaggeration in this story left such a strong impression that it was often quoted ("Dig! Dig!") and even referenced years later in a Psychology Today illustration.
Whatever humorous slant Kurtzman devised in his layouts received a heightened hilarity and amplification when Elder sat down to draw the finished art, and Elder's insertion of background gags set the tone for the entire comic book, quickly spreading throughout into the panels of the other Mad artists and other comic books imitating Mad. Elder's device of separate foreground and background actions was referenced by Louis Malle in his film Zazie dans le métro (1960).
He collaborated frequently with Kurtzman. After leaving Mad, the two worked together on a string of short-lived humor magazines: Trump, Humbug and Help!. For Help!, Elder parodied Archie Comics with his "Goodman Beaver" strip, considered by many to be Elder and Kurtzman's greatest collaboration. The series was reprinted by Kitchen Sink Press with each panel expanded to page size so the readers could see all the little gags.
In the 1960s, Elder and Kurtzman worked for Playboy magazine on the cartoon parody feature "Little Annie Fanny", a color comic a few pages long that starred a naively chaste, busty blond. In 2001, Dark Horse Comics published the trade paperback collections Playboy's Little Annie Fanny, Volume 1" (ISBN 1-56971-519-X) and Playboy's Little Annie Fanny, Volume 2: 1970-1988 (ISBN 1-56971-520-3).
As well, Elder's advertising art, caricatures, cartoons, illustrations and stories were collected in the 392-page career retrospective, Will Elder: The Mad Playboy of Art (Fantagraphics, 2003; ISBN 1-56097-603-9).
[edit] External links
- Mad Mumblings Feature story on the MAD legend.
- Gary Groth interviews Will Elder
- WillElder.net - the official website
| Contributors to Mad "The Usual Gang of Idiots" |
| Editors |
|---|
| Jerry DeFuccio | Al Feldstein | John Ficarra | Harvey Kurtzman | Nick Meglin |
| Writers |
| Anthony Barbieri | Dick DeBartolo | Desmond Devlin | Stan Hart | Frank Jacobs | Tom Koch | Arnie Kogen | Barry Leibmann | Jay Lynch | Andrew J. Schwartzberg | Larry Siegel | Lou Silverstone | Mike Snider |
| Writer-Artists |
| Sergio Aragonés | Dave Berg | John Caldwell | Don Edwing | Al Jaffee | Don Martin | Paul Peter Porges | Antonio Prohías |
| Artists |
| Tom Bunk | Bob Clarke | Paul Coker, Jr. | Jack Davis | Mort Drucker | Will Elder | Drew Friedman | Bernard Krigstein | Peter Kuper | Hermann Mejia | Norman Mingo | Tom Richmond | Jack Rickard | John Severin | Angelo Torres | Rick Tulka | Sam Viviano | Basil Wolverton | Monte Wolverton | Wally Wood | George Woodbridge | Bill Wray |
| Photographers |
| Irving Schild |
| Related articles |
| Mad Magazine | William M. Gaines |
