EXTRACTS: Illustrators issue 18 © 2017 The Book Palace (96 PAGES in Full edition)

3 All images from MAD Magazine © E.C. Publications, Inc. Mort Drucker LEFT: An inimitable Drucker splash page featuring John Travolta from MAD Magazine' s sendup of Saturday Night Fever, issue 201, published September 1978. ABOVE: A panel from 'Crazy Fists', another MAD send- up. Scripted by Dick De Bartolo, it features the story of Frankie, a putative prize fighter, and his overbearing mother, who is convinced her boy is destined to be a famous ocarina maestro, playing sell-out concerts at Carnegie Hall. David Apatoff shares with us the story of one of the giants of U.S. illustration, from his early days as a jobbing comic strip artist to his international appeal as one of MAD Magazine 's premier talents. The 20th century was blessed with many brilliant caricaturists but Mort Drucker stands in a category by himself. As the chief caricaturist for MAD Magazine , Drucker was required to draw not just one caricature of a subject but sometimes 20 or more caricatures of the same person for a single assignment. He had to come p with a variety of facial expressions, from a variety of angles, in whatever lighting the script required. “You had to animate them,” Drucker recalls. “That’s the art.” Furthermore, Drucker’s job required him to master not just faces but anatomy, perspective and full backgrounds as well. Many caricaturists placed large heads on small bodies, with little or no background. Drucker was a ‘full body’ caricaturist. He sometimes had to make a subject recognizable from behind or from a great distance using only his observations about the