My COMICal Romance...

My first love was with Alfred E. Neuman, the boy with misaligned eyes, a gap-toothed smile and the perennial question "What, me worry?"...I was head over heels in love with... MAD magazine (http://www.dccomics.com/mad/?action=about, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mad_Magazine) My father used to collect MAD magazines and bound them together into these thick volumes. I don't know where they're now, but I used to spend hours and hours flicking through the pages for Antonio Prohías's wordless "Spy vs. Spy", Dave Berg's "The Lighter Side of..." which often satirized the suburban lifestyle, capitalism and the generation gap. Then there was Don Martin gags. Don Martin, billed as "Mad's Maddest Artist", drew gag cartoons, generally one page but sometimes longer, featuring lumpen characters with apparently hinged feet. Martin's absurd sight gags were frequently punctuated by an array of bizarre onomatopoeic sound effects such as GLORK, PATWANG-FWEEE, or GAZOWNT-GAZIKKA, coined by Martin himself (or ghost writer Don Edwing). A MAD look at... by Sergio Aragonés (Groo.. does it ring a bell now?) is notable for its silence. He uses virtually no words; speech balloons, when they occur at all, will merely feature a drawing of whatever is being discussed. And lastly... the Mad fold-ins by Al Jaffee.

A question would be asked, often of a topical nature, which apparently was illustrated by a picture taking up the bulk of the page. But when the page was folded inwards, the inner and outer fourth of the picture combined to reveal a surprising answer in both picture and words. MAD is still around but I like the older version better. Maybe I've become too jaded or that I like Ol' Skool style. MAD sparks my interest in comics. I used to collect comics (X-Men, Gen13, Spawn etc and I have some collectors issues - aluminium and gold foil covers) but I've stopped due to unforeseen circumstances. Might resume in the future... I love to draw but alas I can only do good copies. I can't transfer my ideas down to paper. I call myself a poseur, but actually you can make good money doing this.... ie Greg Land incident. However, I know I have the gift of gab but it would be nice if I could draw or illustrate something with it to make it stand out more. Then I'd die happy..... hahaha...