Don Martin

Don Martin was probably one of my favorite cartoonist growing up. His artwork appeared in MAD at a time the magazine was at it's height as far as both the artwork in their movie and television satires as well as some of the original offbeat humor created by Martin and some of his MAD cohorts.

And as much as I enjoyed Sergio Aragonés's MAD Marginals which appeared in the corners of the magazine or Antonio Prohías Spy vs. Spy cartoons, it was Don Martin's bizarre humor and character design I was drawn to the most.


It was a mix of Martin's humor, his bizarre barrel-shaped characters and the word's he'd use to create the sound effects in his comics that made his work really funny to read.

Apparently, he was a real character in real life too. He liked slipping into the backgrounds of photographs tourists would take of each other, so when their films were developed they would wonder who the strange man was.

Sadly Don Martin passed away back in 2000. But if you would like to check out more of his work I highly recommend you get your hands on a paperback collection his comic art. In particular the work he did with MAD Magazine which is among his best. Most of the reprints I imagine you can get for a fairly reasonable price on Amazon.com or any other online bookstore.

If you're a young artist who fancies himself both a writer and an artist, I highly recommend his work. I know his work was great fun for me to read when I was growing up.