Mad Man Martin

With Mad Magazine leaving us, I borrowed from my library, in a fit of nostalgia, a collection of Don  Martin cartoons.  Martin, known as "Mad's maddest artist," died in 2000 at 68.  Though his characters look bizarre, and make weird sounds (Martin was famous for his sound effects), Martin was himself a quiet, normal-looking guy.

In reading three decades worth of his work at once, it was fun to see how often he returned to certain themes.  For instance, he liked doing cartoon about Mount Rushmore (a "barber" who snips a bush from Lincoln's nose, a cleaning crew that works on the legs of the statues underground and so on).  He also liked jokes involving novelty store gags (squirting flowers, compressed boxing gloves, funny glasses and nose).

Then there are quite a few takes on the Rapunzel legend (two climbers on different sides of the castle, climbing armpit hair, climbing a horse's tail) and seemingly endless variations on the princess kissing the frog (a prince whose tongue flicks at flies, a princess who eats frogs legs which turn into prince legs).

I also forgot how gruesome he could be.  There are a lot of severed limbs in Martin's work, along with drills through the head and people being opened up on operating tables.

What shocked me, however, was though I hadn't read any of this stuff in many years, I remembered a lot of specific cartoons.  I guess that's how deep an impression Martin made.