Mort Drucker, R.I.P.
News From Me
By Mark Evanier
April 9, 2020
Mort Drucker, whose awesome skills at caricature were the
envy of everyone who ever tried to draw a famous face, died last night at the
age of 91. I have no details as to the cause of death but I can tell you a few
things about Mort…
Mort began drawing comic books in 1947 when Will Eisner, who
had seen the young artist's work, recommended him to Bert Whitman who drew the
newspaper strip, Debbie Dean. He was an assistant on that strip and
several others until he joined the staff of National (now DC) Comics in the
early fifties where he was a production artist doing "fixes" and such
in the office.
His relationship with the company continued for years, even
after he left the staff job and also freelanced drawing stories for other
publishers. For DC, he often assisted Owen Fitzgerald, who drew comics like The
Adventures of Bob Hope for them and he succeeded Fitzgerald as the artist
of that comic. When I met Mort and mentioned I'd worked with Owen, he lit up
and told me how much of "learning how to draw" he owed to that man.
He found his way to MAD magazine in 1956 at a
precarious moment in that publication's history. Founding editor Harvey
Kurtzman had departed and taken most of the art crew with him. Replacement
editor Al Feldstein was assembling a new team and with no idea how valuable the
new applicant would be to MAD, he took a shot with Drucker.
Mort had never thought of himself as a caricaturist but when
called upon to draw the comedy team of Bob & Ray for some pieces, he displayed
a flair that surprised even him. Before long, Mort was the illustrator of movie
and TV parodies in every issue of MAD…an association that lasted some
55 years. Big stars would say that you didn't feel you'd made it in Hollywood until Mort Drucker had drawn you in MAD.
In the photo above, you see Mort receiving one of his many
awards from his fellow cartoonists. He got a lot of them and most of his peers
considered him the Gold Standard at celebrity likenesses. We will write more
about him here in the days to come.
DEUCKER, Mort
Born: 3/22/1929, Brooklyn, New
York, U.S.A.
Died: 4/8/2020, Woodbury, New
York, U.S.A.
Mort Drucker’s
westerns – illustrator caricaturist:
The Rifle Man! – 1960
Mad Visits John Wayde on the Set of ‘At the Alamo” – 1961
Bananez – 1962
Cheyenne
Awful – 1965
The Virginiaham – 1965
The Iron Horselaff – 1967
Sombre – 1967
Butch Casually and the Sundance Kid – 1970
The Shootiest – 1977
Dunce With Wolves – 1991
White Fish Will Rides Again - 1995
Dreadwood - 2005
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