The focus of this Sunday’s New York Times Magazine is its annual “The Lives They Lived” feature, which memorializes many of those we’ve lost this year, including George Carlin, Will Elder, Joan Winston, and others.

My favorite component of the issue turned out not to be the words, but rather a single photograph, taken in 1939 of pals Al Jaffee and Will Elder as they yukked it up in their high school cafeteria:

It’s easy to see why they were destined to become part of the “usual gang of idiots” behind Mad magazine. I’d have killed to have lunch with those two guys. They’d have had me snorting milk out my nose in seconds! (more…)

Will Elder, one of the founding artists of MAD magazine, passed away this morning. Though I attended the 1972 EC Comics Convention, as far as I recall, Elder did not, and so I never met the man and have no personal anecdotes to share. (I did, however, meet much of the rest of the EC crew, managed to get Bill Gaines, Joe Orlando, George Evans, Al Williamson, and Wally Wood to sign my program book, and even got sketches from the last three of those names, plus a caricature of me by Jack Davis that you see as the icon at left.)

But I’ve long admired his artwork, not just in those early issues of MAD, but also in the pages of Trump, Humbug, and Playboy. That last publication was where, with Harvey Kurtzman, Elder co-created the strip Little Annie Fanny at Hugh Hefner’s request.

I would have liked to have met him, because he was reported to be a wild and crazy guy, legendary in his zaniness. The caricature above, taken from that con’s program book, and drawn by Marie Severin back when she and Elder worked together at EC in the ’50s, gives a clue as to how he was seen by his coworkers. (more…)