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Will Elder: The MAD Playboy of Art
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Price: $19.95
Price subject to change!
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 741.5973
EAN: 9781560975601
ISBN: 1560975601
Label: Fantagraphics Books
Manufacturer: Fantagraphics Books
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 392
Publication Date: 2003-10
Publisher: Fantagraphics Books
Studio: Fantagraphics Books
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Customer review of: Will Elder: The MAD Playboy of Art
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Customer Rating: 
Summary: As Mad as it gets !!!
Comment: Will Elder, as you know was one of the Original EC Comics Artists. Along with Harvey Kurtzman he was a Part of the first 25 Issues of Mad Magazine.
His amazing Art helped to define what Mad was all about. To put it in Words, this man went Plumb Loco, and just about created Lampoon Art all on his own.
This Lavish 392 Page Book is The Document of Will's Life and his Art. Over 100 Pages of his Comic Art is Reproduced here, and this Material is a Feast for the Eyes, for anyone who enjoys Comics and Good Humor.
Besides Mad, Will's work in other Publications are here as well. The Humor Magazines: Panic, Trump, Humbug, Help! and Pageant are all represented with lot's of his Work not seen in decades. The 'Liitle Annie Fanny" and "Goodman Beaver" Stories {Teaming with Harvey Kurtzman, again} are here in Bulk as well.
Paintings, Portraits, Still Lifes, Stetches and Drawings from Will's Personal Files show another side of his Talents.
This Book is One of the Best, I have every seen on the Subject of a Comic Artist...{And I have seen a few!}. It is a Massive Volume about an American Original...The One and Only...Villie Elder !!!
Customer Rating:
Summary: The Most Potrzebie Book Ever!
Comment: Just buy this already-- here's a book with great production values that features one of the great artists (of any kind!) of the 20th century, Villy Elder. "Genius" it says-- and for once it's fully justified. Comic genius, artistic genius, wiseass genius: Elder is the real thing.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Good, but lots of overlap with other collections
Comment: I'm not going to fault Daniel Clowes for including selections from Elder's work available elsewhere (MAD satires on "Gasoline Alley", "Archie", etc) or for NOT including the complete "Goodman Beaver Goes Playboy," which is apparently under copyright limitations from the ARCHIE publishers (and is available elswhere on the 'net!) However I would have preferred more complete sequences from TRUMP and HUMBUG - which are not readily available elsewhere - and fewer examples of Elder's "straight" artwork - one still-life fruitbowl is plenty, thanks! How about more on the "A Night at the Castle" and "With trembling pseudopods" illos, which are in any event reproduced elsewhere?
Customer Rating:
Summary: Hoo-ha! At Last:The Whole Furshlugginer Mess!
Comment: This collection of Elder's work is a solid addition to what is already available. (The complete Mad comic book issues are available in paperback form at most bookstores, and the Little Annie Fanny series can be ordered from Amazon.) This volume contains much of Elder's work from Trump, Humbug and Help, as well as other magazines, like the 1950s Pageant.
Also included are many personal paintings and drawings of Elder's family, as well as landscapes.
A class clown in art school, Elder also assiduously studied such masters as Peter Breughel and Cezzane. In fact, he even gives homage to these painters in an illustrated series for Pageant, in which he discusses the artists which inspired him.
There is a lengthy essay by Bill Stoudt in which he describes the painstaking process by which Elder, Harvey Kurtzman and Hugh Hefner created each episode of the "Little Annie Fanny" series. Hefner insisted that each page resemble a painting, and that is precisely what Elder delivered. Only after numerous drafts, sketches and erasures was a page of "Annie" ready for print.
When commissioned to satirize Norman Rockwell, Elder decided to prepare for the work exactly as Rockwell would. He enlisted his neighbors to model for the characters in the painting, and the result was the hilarious "Visit to Grandma's" in which a wholesome American family is depicted feeding small animals to a Venus Fly-Trap plant.
You can look over the panels of "L'il Melvin" or "Howdy Dooit" and see something different each time. This is because Elder doted over each picture, cramming it with details, building one joke over the next. Thus it took hours - maybe days - to complete one page, but so what? It kept the kids in the 1950s laughing their butts off! (I know because I was one of them. We used to run around the playground, running like the characters in the "Starchie" parody with our knees up to our chins.)
But did he make money? Well, eventually, but he could have made a lot more. In 1956, Kurtzman and Elder left Mad to start their own humor magazine, Trump, financed by Hugh Hefner. Kurtzman had given an ultimatum to publisher William Gaines that he would remain with Mad only if he could retain 51% ownership. Gaines insisted on 49%, so Kurtzman quit. In retrospect, he should have stayed, because the magazine went on to make a fortune for Gaines. Trump, however, folded after two issues.
As other reviewers have suggested, Elder's work belongs not only the category of "comic books" but possibly to the world of art. Will Elder drew in the tradition of Breughel and Hogarth. He drew the Human Comedy. Ultimately, he held the mirror up to nature and found it all hilarious.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Excellent Art Book
Comment: Will Elder is one of the greatest artists in American history. Elder's works have appeared in magazines ranging from Mad to Playboy. Many of Elder's best works are parodies of such comic strips as Archie and Lil' Abner. Elder eventually became a full-time artist at Playboy Magazine and was one of Hugh Hefner's top assistants. This is a must have book for all Will Elder fans.
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Editorial Reviews:
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The co-creator of MAD and Little Annie Fanny finally gets the career retrospective he deserves. Will Elder is widely regarded as one of the most influential cartoonists of the second half of the 20th century. And one of the funniest. He is best known for his artistic partnership with Harvey Kurtzman on all their most highly visible collaborations throughout their careers: MAD magazine, Humbug, Goodman Beaver, Trump, and Little Annie Fanny. At long last, Elder is getting the book he so richly deserves: Will Elder: The Mad Playboy of Art, a gigantic coffee table book collecting his best work from more than a half a century of drawing and painting. The book will reprint a representative sampling of the work well-known to aficionados, including stories from the original MAD comic, independent efforts from Humbug, Help!, and Trump magazines, and Little Annie Fanny pages reproduced from the original, painted artwork. Above and beyond the known is the relatively unknown, obscure, or unpublished work, such as pages and spreads from a variety of magazines in the '50s and '60s that Elder contributed to (such as Pageant and Saturday Evening Post), the infamous Norman Rockwell painting parody slated for the 3rd, unreleased issue of Trump, hysterical gag sketches, celebrity caricatures, oil paintings done for his family, and more. The book includes commentary by Hugh Hefner, Harvey Kurtzman, Jack Davis, Al Jaffee, Terry Gilliam, William Stout, and Jerry Garcia, who describe the impact that Elder's work had on satire and comic at in the second half of 20th century America. Elder himself comments on individual pieces, and Daniel Clowes, the author of Ghost World, supplies the introduction.
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