{"id":437,"date":"2008-05-18T17:38:47","date_gmt":"2008-05-19T00:38:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/2008\/05\/original-mad-man-will-elder-gone\/"},"modified":"2008-05-17T17:48:46","modified_gmt":"2008-05-18T00:48:46","slug":"original-mad-man-will-elder-gone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/2008\/05\/18\/original-mad-man-will-elder-gone\/","title":{"rendered":"Mad Prankster Crazy Willy Gone"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"font-style: italic\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.observer.com\/2008\/will-elder-illustrator-and-prankster-dies-86\" target=\"_blank\">from the New York Observer<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<h1 class=\"title\" style=\"color: #003687; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0pt; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0pt; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 24px\">Illustrator and Prankster Will Elder Dies at 86<\/h1>\n<p class=\"meta\" style=\"margin-bottom: 1em; text-transform: uppercase; color: #6d6d6d; line-height: 1.4em; font-size: 8px\"><span class=\"article-author\" style=\"font-style: normal; font-weight: bold; margin: 0px\"><span class=\"article-by\" style=\"font-weight: normal\">BY<\/span>\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.observer.com\/node\/37687\" style=\"text-decoration: none; color: #003687\" target=\"_blank\">MATT HABER<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0|\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<span class=\"article-date\" style=\"margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; display: inline; margin-right: 3px; color: #6d6d6d\">MAY 15, 2008<\/span>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"article-tags\" style=\"display: inline; color: #003687; font-weight: normal\"><span class=\"tags\" style=\"font-weight: bold\">|\u00a0\u00a0TAGS:<\/span>\u00a0<\/p>\n<ul class=\"links inline\" style=\"display: inline; padding: 0px; margin: 0px\">\n<li class=\"first taxonomy_term_31417\" style=\"display: inline; list-style-type: none; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0.5em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.observer.com\/culture\" rel=\"tag\" title=\"Arts &amp; Culture\" class=\"taxonomy_term_31417\" style=\"text-decoration: none; color: #003687\" target=\"_blank\">ARTS &amp; CULTURE<\/a><\/li>\n<li class=\"taxonomy_term_48668\" style=\"display: inline; list-style-type: none; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0.5em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.observer.com\/term\/48668\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"taxonomy_term_48668\" style=\"text-decoration: none; color: #003687\" target=\"_blank\">MAD MAGAZINE<\/a><\/li>\n<li class=\"last taxonomy_term_54820\" style=\"display: inline; list-style-type: none; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0.5em; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.observer.com\/term\/54820\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"taxonomy_term_54820\" style=\"text-decoration: none; color: #003687\" target=\"_blank\">WILL ELDER<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p class=\"leadImage\" style=\"float: right; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 4px; padding-left: 7px\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.observer.com\/files\/imagecache\/vertical\/files\/willelder.JPG\" style=\"border-style: initial; border-color: initial; border-width: 0px; padding: 0px; margin: 0px\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 1em; padding-left: 0px; margin: 0px\">Journalista: The Comics Journal Weblog is\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/tcj.com\/journalista\/?p=599\" style=\"text-decoration: none; color: #003687; font-weight: bold\" target=\"_blank\">reporting<\/a>\u00a0that\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.willelder.net\/\" style=\"text-decoration: none; color: #003687; font-weight: bold\" target=\"_blank\">Will Elder<\/a>, the famed illustrator and one of the founders of\u00a0<em>Mad<\/em>Magazine, has died at 86. (This comes via\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.boingboing.net\/2008\/05\/15\/will-elder-rip.html\" style=\"text-decoration: none; color: #003687; font-weight: bold\" target=\"_blank\">boing boing<\/a>.) Elder was considered a major influence on artists like Robert Crumb and Daniel Clowes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 1em; padding-left: 0px; margin: 0px\">Gary Groth, an editor at Fantagraphics, which published several Elder books (including\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.fantagraphics.com\/index.php?page=shop.product_details&amp;flypage=shop.flypage&amp;product_id=1317&amp;category_id=230&amp;manufacturer_id=0&amp;option=com_virtuemart&amp;Itemid=62\" style=\"text-decoration: none; color: #003687; font-weight: bold\" target=\"_blank\"><em>Will Elder: The Mad Playboy of Art<\/em><\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.fantagraphics.com\/index.php?page=shop.product_details&amp;flypage=shop.flypage&amp;product_id=205&amp;category_id=230&amp;manufacturer_id=0&amp;option=com_virtuemart&amp;Itemid=62\" style=\"text-decoration: none; color: #003687; font-weight: bold\" target=\"_blank\"><em>Chicken Fat<\/em><\/a>) told the Media Mob, &#8220;He was such a fabulous talent in the sense that he could do almost anything.&#8221; Recalling his penchant for pranks, Mr. Groth called Mr. Elder &#8220;instrumental in making\u00a0<em>Mad<\/em>.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 1em; padding-left: 0px; margin: 0px\">In David Hajdu&#8217;s recent\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.davidhajdu.com\/books\/TenCentPlague.html\" style=\"text-decoration: none; color: #003687; font-weight: bold\" target=\"_blank\">book<\/a>\u00a0<em>The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America<\/em>, the author described Elder as follows:<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"webkit-indent-blockquote\" style=\"margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 40px; border-width: initial; border-color: initial; border-style: none; padding: 0px\"><p><span class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px\">He could render anything he could see with the precision of a photograph\u2014or mimic virtually any fine-art style, including various modes of impressionism and early abstract art\u2014yet he had no inclination to waste his time on anything other than his overriding interest, pranksterism. The sound of his name to those who knew him well, such as his former schoolmates and fellow cartoonists, Al Jaffee (who met Elder in eighth grade, when they were both being tested for admission to the High School of Music and Art), John Severin, and David Gantz, was a cue for grin and a round of &#8216;Crazy Willy&#8217; stories: the time, when he was a kid in the Bronx, when Elder took discarded pieces of beef carcasses from a meat-processing plant, arranged them in old clothes on the railroad tracks, and started screaming that his friend Moishe had been killed; or the time, when he was in high school, that he smeared chalk dust on his face and pretended to be hanging in the coat closet; or, when went to lunch with some friends from EC [Comics] and tried to pay the cashier with leaves of lettuce that he had in his wallet. His humor was almost aggressively madcap, startling, often dark, and silly.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><span class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px\"><\/span>[ <a href=\"http:\/\/www.observer.com\/2008\/will-elder-illustrator-and-prankster-dies-86\" target=\"_blank\">click to read full article in the NYO<\/a> ]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>from the New York Observer Illustrator and Prankster Will Elder Dies at 86 BY\u00a0MATT HABER\u00a0\u00a0|\u00a0\u00a0MAY 15, 2008\u00a0 |\u00a0\u00a0TAGS:\u00a0 ARTS &amp; CULTURE MAD MAGAZINE WILL ELDER Journalista: The Comics Journal Weblog is\u00a0reporting\u00a0that\u00a0Will Elder, the famed illustrator and one of the founders of\u00a0MadMagazine, has died at 86. (This comes via\u00a0boing boing.) Elder was considered a major influence [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-437","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture-art"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/437","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=437"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/437\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=437"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=437"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=437"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}