Rockwillelder
Journalista is reporting the death of legendary MAD artist Will Elder at age 86. The Bronx-born Elder went to school at the Manhattan High School of Music and Art where he met the young Harvey Kurtzman. The two went on to work at EC, where Elder inked John Severin. Later, when Kurtzman created Mad, Elder become a mainstay with his dense, joke-packed work. The two created Goodman Beaver for Help! and Little Annie Fanny later on for Playboy.

Elder worked extensively in advertising, as well, and his style, cartoony yet solid, was a huge influence on the underground comics to come. He was inducted into the Eisner Award Hall of Fame in 2003.

Elder’s funeral will be held Sunday in New Jersey.

Thanks

Related: Excerpts from a Gary Groth interview with Elder.
ASIFA-HOLLYWOOD archive of Little Annie Fanny art.

1 COMMENT

  1. I started reading MAD around the time they were reprinting the comics as inserts in the Fall Super Specials. His “chicken fat” method of tossing everything into the background has become part of the DNA of MAD artwork (and has influenced my writing as well).

    Much later I discovered his work in Playboy, and avidly collected as many issues as I could. (Of course, this was before the internet, so I had to thumb through each issue to find the rare gem. Sometimes more than once.) The Dark Horse reprinting of Little Annie Fanny is highly recommended, especially for the annotations in the back.

  2. The curse of living continues. Will Elder was a comic genius and his generation of of witty creators is dwindling down to a final sigh.
    To his talent, he inspired too many to list.
    To his humor, he left many people grinning from morning to night.

    He is missed. There’s no grinning, now.

  4. That’s sad news. I first discovered Will Elder’s work in the black and white Mad paperbacks in the mid 1970s. His off-the-wall humour was an inspiration, and laugh out loud funny. Parody is an art form and Will Elder was its master.

  5. That’s sad news. I first discovered Will Elder’s work in the black and white Mad paperbacks in the mid 1970s. His off-the-wall humour was an inspiration, and laugh out loud funny. Parody is an art form and Will Elder was its master.

  6. Sad news indeed. Another charter member of the “Usual Gang of Idiots” leaving to join Gaines in that great MADhouse in the sky… His Wonder Woman parody was a textbook distillation of all the visual puns you could cram into a page. I count myself fortunate to have met and spoken to him at SDCC back in the 90s.

  7. It´s very sad news for me, read all the tchatkies in the panels is follow clues of pure humor, all the jokes never put me sad, Will always be with us, good luck Willy!