Posted By Dan Greenfield on Oct 24, 2025 | 1 comment

A BIRTHDAY TRIBUTE…

By PAUL KUPPERBERG

True story:

In 2004, as an editor in DC’s Licensed Publishing department, I was putting together the contents for MADvertising: A MAD Look at 50 Years of MADison Avenue (Watson-Guptill, 2005), in which was gathered all the magazine’s advertising parodies and satires. Searching for supplemental, behind-the-scenes material I spent a couple of days digging through the MAD art department’s archives (i.e., decades of stuff tossed into several flat files), coming up with all sorts of goodies (none of which the Watson-Guptill designers used), including a bunch of photographs from the shoot (by Irving Schild) for the “Cemetery Fillers Cigarettes” ad, which appeared on the back cover of MAD #125 (March 1969).

The parody featured an actor dressed as Hitler, cigarette dangling from his lips over copy praising the deadly quality and cemetery-filling ability of the product. Among the unused photos I found was one with the actor smiling for the camera alongside MAD Magazine editor Al Feldstein. Amused by my find, I showed it to a couple of the current MAD editors, all of whom had worked under Feldstein before his 1984 retirement.

They looked at the photo, then one of them, in perfect deadpan, asked me, “Which one is Hitler again?”

After they picked me up off the floor from laughing, it was explained to me that Al Feldstein was “one tough son of a bitch,” an editor who knew what he wanted and how it should be done.

Several of his other collaborators agreed. “Al knew comics inside out,” artist and EC Comics colorist Marie Severin said in Comic Book Artist Magazine #10 in 2001. “If he chewed you out, it’s because he cared about quality. He made us better.”

In a 1996 interview in The Comics Journal #186, EC and MAD artist Jack Davis remembered, “Al is the guy who gave me my first job, and I think he’s a very good editor. He makes sure that everything runs right, that deadlines are met, and he’s put me on the carpet quite a few times for being late, and I’ve never had that from anyone else. … Al really used to chew me out, and I needed it.”

Brooklyn born Al Feldstein (October 24, 1925 – April 29, 2014), one of the most influential writer-artists-editors in American pop culture, helped shape the Golden Age of comics and turned MAD Magazine into a cultural phenomenon. Feldstein grew up during the Great Depression where his love for comics and storytelling was influenced by the pulp magazines and newspaper comic strips like Hal Foster’s Prince Valiant and Alex Raymond’s Flash Gordon.

Feldstein attended New York’s High School of Music & Art, where he became friends with some of his future colleagues and collaborators, including Will Elder, Harvey Kurtzman, Al Jaffee, and John Severin. While still a student, Feldstein was hired as an office boy and background inker by comic book packager Jerry Iger’s S. M. Iger Studio, and, after graduation, started freelancing for small comics publishers like Fox.

Gaines and Feldstein

In 1948, Feldstein met EC Comics publisher William M. Gaines, who had just taken over the company after the death of his father, Max Gaines, publisher of the first four-color, saddle-stitched newsprint pamphlet, the comic book-like Funnies on Parade, and co-publisher of All-American Publications, which would later merge with Jack Liebowitz’s and Harry Donenfeld’s National Allied Publications to become National Periodical Publications and, finally, DC Comics.

Together, Gaines and Feldstein transformed Max’s Educational Comics, publisher of Picture Stories From the Bible and funny animal comics, into Entertainment Comics, publishers of Tales From the Crypt, The Vault of Horror, Weird Science, Weird Fantasy, Frontline Combat, and Shock SuspenStories, considered some of the best and most innovative comics in the history of the medium and featuring one of the greatest talent line-ups ever assembled, including Johnny Craig, Reed Crandall, Jack Davis, Will Elder, George Evans, Frank Frazetta, Graham Ingels, Jack Kamen, Bernard Krigstein, Joe Orlando, John Severin, Al Williamson, Basil Wolverton, and Wally Wood.

And MAD Magazine.

Rather than submit to the comics industry self-imposed censorship of the Comics Code Authority in the 1950s, Gaines decided instead to cancel his line of 10-cent, four-color comics and turned the satiric MAD comics into the 25¢ black-and-white MAD Magazine, which was beyond the reach of the Code. MAD could continue pushing the boundaries of humor — and, some said, good taste — without restrictions. It became a must-read for kids and adults and influenced generations of comedians and comedy writers. At its peak, MAD sold over 2 million copies per issue.

Al Feldstein edited MAD for 28 years, helped by many of the artists who had done such brilliant work in the EC titles like Wood, Elder, Joe Orlando, Davis, and John Severin, and the rest of the “Usual Gang of Idiots,” including Don Martin, Mort Drucker, Sergio Aragonés, Frank Jacobs, Antonio Prohias, Dave Berg, Jaffee, Bob Clarke, and George Woodbridge. He shaped MAD’s style of satirical humor, poking fun at politics, advertising, television, movies, and everyday life, and became the standard copied by almost every humor magazine that followed, leaving its indelible Alfred E. Neuman-shaped mark on American humor.

And on me. When I started writing for Marvel’s MAD imitator Crazy Magazine in the late 1970s, Feldstein and Kurtzman’s MAD was my guiding star and reference point… some might call it borderline plagiarism, but the MAD method of parody was so spot on and to the point it was hard to imagine there was any other way to do it.

Though remembered primarily as an editor, writer and one tough son of a bitch, Feldstein was also an artist who drew hundreds of stories and covers over the course of his career, creating some of EC’s most memorable images.

Here then, MY 13 FAVORITE AL FELDSTEIN EC COMICS COVERS:

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Modern Love #4 (December 1949/January 1950). Can you ever have enough cover copy?

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Tales from the Crypt #21 (December 1950/January 1951). A great use of the mirror behind “Judge Hawley” to focus the eye on the cover’s major elements.

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Weird Science #6 (March/April 1951). “Quick, Henry! The Flit!”

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The Haunt of Fear #8 (July/August 1951). Giving a whole new meaning to “getting a little head”!

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Weird Science #8 (July/August 1951). A beautifully balanced cover image!

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Weird Fantasy #9 (September/October 1951). Again, just a beautiful execution of a simple image, one that evokes the vastness of space and the tension of the situation.

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The Haunt of Fear #10 (November/December 1951). Olé.

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Tales from the Crypt #28 (February/March 1952). I’m claustrophobic and this one makes me squirm.

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Weird Fantasy #16 (November/December 1952). Feldstein’s aliens rule!

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Tales of Terror Annual #3 (1953). A great big compilation of EC horror reprints that really stretched the value of the readers’ 25¢!

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Weird Fantasy #17 (January/February 1953). Dinosaurs, rocket ships, and Ray Bradbury, oh boy!

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Panic #1 (February/March 1954). MAD was a hit, so to capitalize on its success, Feldstein’s Panic, dubbed the “only authorized imitation” of MAD, was added to the schedule.

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Shock SuspenStories #12 (December 1953/January 1954). It wasn’t the first comic book story to tackle the issue of drug abuse, but Feldstein’s graphic depiction of a tormented junkie makes it one of the most startling cover images of the era.

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MORE

— PAUL KUPPERBERG: My 13 Favorite Will Elder MAD Stories. Click here.

— PAUL KUPPERBERG: My 13 Favorite (Mostly Not MAD) AL JAFFEE Features. Click here.

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PAUL KUPPERBERG was a Silver Age fan who grew up to become a Bronze Age comic book creator, writer of Superman, the Doom Patrol, and Green Lantern, creator of Arion Lord of Atlantis, Checkmate, and Takion, and slayer of Aquababy, Archie, and Vigilante. He is the Harvey and Eisner Award nominated writer of Archie Comics’ Life with Archie, and his YA novel Kevin was nominated for a GLAAD media award and won a Scribe Award from the IAMTW. Check out his new memoir, Panel by Panel: My Comic Book Life. 

Website: https://www.paulkupperberg.net/

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