Not Getting Any Elder

Or
Stop the MADness
Will Elder, one of the definers of the anarchy of Mad magazine, has died from Parkinson’s disease at the age of 86. Elder’s satirical illustrations were spot-on parodies of the best Madison Ave. ads, and were densely packed with puns, such as a Chinese Restaurant called Few Men Chew, and odd behavior in the background, and helped set the mag’s tone from the outset. The heavily layered approach influenced Robert Crumb and was translated into other media by the Zucker brothers in Police Squad! and Airplane! Elder also created the Playboy cartoon Little Annie Fanny, a sophisticated, erudite set of panels… OK, it was a literal comic strip as the big busted blonde ended up naked in every adventure. On another assignment, he took Archie, Jughead and the gang out of Springdale and sent them on a night of debauchery at the Playboy Mansion, which got him sued by Archie Comics. These illustrations were a far cry from his first gig after graduating from the National Academy of Design in Manhattan: drawing maps for the Normandy landing on D-Day as a member of the 668th Topographical Engineers. Elder’s twisted sensibilities extended far beyond the printed page – a Valentine’s Day gift for his wife consisted of a chicken heart with an arrow through it, he and friends gathered meat from a butcher, dressed it with their clothes and spread them around a railroad yard, then started shrieking that “Mikey had fallen on the railroad tracks,” bringing a slew of mothers with sons named Mike running to the horrible scene.

Greg’s Usual Band of Idiots suffers its first casualty and moves into 18th.