An Article Calculated to Drive You MAD!

By Kenny Cooper

“If I had to pick one single comic book that was the best comic book ever, it would be Kurtzman’s Mad.” — Alan Moore

In the early 1950′s, one of the biggest comic publishers in America was EC Comics. At its peak, the company published various genre books such as Tales from the Crypt and Two Fisted Tales with A-list cartoonists such as Harvey Kurtzman, Will Elder (both of whom would later work for Playboy’s cartooning department), Wally Wood (who would later design the Daredevil costume we see today), John Severin (who would later be a major contributor for Cracked) and Jack Davis (who would later illustrate posters to movies likes It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World) working for them. Horror, western, crime, sci-fi, and war books flooded a market tired of superheroes. At a time when even Superman and Batman were feeling stale, EC’s books were among the most well-written and well-drawn comics of the era, leading the company to great heights. However, a public scandal sparked by psychologist Fredric Wertham over the violent content of many comics (especially EC’s books) led to a comics-censorship board known as the Comics Code Authority and most of EC’s most popular books to be canceled. Only one book remained in Wertham’s wake: Mad.

Before it was a magazine, Mad (or Tales Calculated to Drive You Mad) was an anthology comic of about three or four humor stories each issue. Starting in 1952, two years before the CCA would arise, the book featured the absolute best of EC’s talent pool. Kurtzman did the layouts and the scripts while Wood, Elder, or Davis usually did the finishes (Severin would contribute until issue #10). The first issue parodied the various genres that were EC’s bread and butter— horror, sci-fi, crime, and western— though the parodies were more of the general genres than any specific story. That changed with the second issue in the story “Mole!” which parodied a Dick Tracy villain and “Melvin of the Apes” which parodied Tarzan. The story was such a hit with fans that the next issue parodied radio serials Dragnet (“Dragged Net!”) and the Lone Ranger (“The Lone Stranger!”). This obviously would become the book’s most iconic and lasting feature.

“Mole!” is, in many ways, the quintessential Mad story of the early age. Everything that made the comic great is in full force in this seven-page story. Kurtzman applies a simple but effective narrative that draws you in. Melvin Mole (for some reason, an overwhelming majority of early Mad stories had at least one character named Melvin in them) is an expert bank robber who enters banks at night through his inhuman digging prowess. Melvin is caught by the cops during a job and put in jail where the warden personally informs him he will not escape and will face the electric chair. Melvin then uses some improbable tool to dig himself out of jail only to pop up somewhere with a lot of police (where he would magically produce guns out of nowhere and try to shoot everyone) and then wind up back in prison in a tougher cell where the cycle would repeat. Eventually, Melvin digs out of solitary confinement with a nose hair and digs straight to the electric chair. While Melvin is unabashedly amoral, his determination to escape coupled with the ridiculousness of his criminal actions make him hard not to feel for. Kurtzman’s paneling is also top notch here with not a single panel wasted and all pushing the story along beautifully. Bill Elder also shines here with great facial composure, movement, and great background jokes that would become the signature style of the comic.

One of the book’s greatest strengths was Harvey Kurtzman’s sense of pacing. The greatest element in comedy is a keen sense of timing and Kurtzman managed to stage his layouts in such a way to time a gag just right. When it was funnier to remove a panel of action, Kurtzman did it. When the story required a slower, more methodical pace, Kurtzman would do that too. Observe the image on the bottom, the ending to Mad’s first story “Hoo-Hah!” Note how slowly and carefully, the metaphorical camera pulls back to what’s actually going on. The timing gives the scene a sense of fluid motion, as if the old ghost is actually walking further into the page. Earlier, we see a gag where the characters come across what appears to be a ghost. The old man (who we have yet to realize is a ghost) slowly opens a door over three panels to reveal the ghastly terror behind. The pace immediately speeds up as the very next panel is of one of the characters running from the house, already miles away and completely freaking out. Kurtzman was a master of pacing and the humor of Mad really allowed him to showcase that well.

While many of EC’s other books were fairly straightforward, the nature of Mad allowed the creators the ability to do almost literally whatever they wanted with the book… and what they wanted was lots and lots of background gags. The artists would fill the pages of the book with just about any random joke they could think of. One trademark of Mad was that an artist could add a certain detail to either the background (such as some writing on the wall) or on the characters itself (such as Superduperman’s logo in his titular story in #4) and change it on every single panel. In a typical Mad story, almost 90% of the jokes were occurring behind the story. A good example would be down below. Note the sheer volume of over-the-top sight gags that have little to do with what’s actually going on within the story. Every time you reread the story, there’s yet another ridiculous joke buried underneath the background (such as, on another page, “Why is there a gorilla standing in line at this night club?”)

Along with the sight gags came a surprisingly modern sense of humor. Mad had a reputation for postmodern experimentation; one issue proclaimed it would “change your view” on the book… which meant the pages inside were upside down and the reader would have to “change” point of view to read it. Later covers liked to experiment as well; one was an almost completely orange cover with the cover art in the far right hand corner of the book in celebration for the “comic with the world’s smallest title”; another was a Time magazine parody. The experimentation came with a very, very dark sense of humor. Even compared to the issues of today, the Kurtzman era Mad were full of morally despicable people who would often do really dark things to others. A good example of this was the story “Flob is a Slob” in Mad #4. The story was a parody of the romance comics where the female protagonist chooses between a simple bumpkin who cares for her and the slick handsome jerk who take her for granted. In this story, the girl discovers the handsome guy is an unfaithful criminal who robs banks and sells weed to children. She then runs back to her faithful first love. However, she ends her tale by telling the reader she went back to the jerk and is now selling weed to kids as well with one of the most demonic looking faces you will ever see in a comic book. Another rather disturbing story within the same issue is “Shadow!” The story follows Margo Pain, friend and companion to the Shadow, as she is being targeted for murder with only the Shadow to protect her. Eventually, she gets caught in an exploding house with this as the end of the story:

As the CCA came to pass, many of EC’s top books were canceled yet Mad survived and still does to this day. Mad became the company’s only bread winner. However, the CCA put a hamper on the more dark content of the comic. Possibly to escape this, Mad became the black-and-white magazine we now see today. Though Spy vs. Spy and Alfred E. Neuman are what readers think of when they think of the book, it would behoove anyone who is a fan of absurdist comedy to track down some of the reprints of these old books. The fun these creators had in making this book leaps off the page even today and the humor—the most time-sensitive of all entertainment—still works today. Through highly talented creators and a bit of insane postmodern experimentation, the early days of Mad stands as a testament to the medium as a whole.