Don Martin (May 18, 1931–January 6, 2000) was a popular American satirical comic artist and cartoon artist who contributed to MAD magazine from 1955 to 1987.
Martin often was billed as "MAD's Maddest Artist." Whereas other features in MAD, recurring or otherwise, typically were headed with pun-filled "department" titles, Martin's work always was headed with only his name—"Don Martin Dept."—further fanfare presumably being unnecessary. At his peak, each issue of MAD usually carried three Martin strips of one or two pages each.
Martin's immediately recognizable drawing style (which featured the famous "hinged foot")was typified by a sameness in the appearance of the characters (the punchline to a strip often was accompanied by a deadpan take with eyes half open and the mouth absent) and by an endless capacity for newly coined, onomatopoetic sound effects, such as "BREEDEET BREEDEET" for a croaking frog or "FAGROON klubble klubble" for a collapsing building.
His work probably reached its peak of quality and technical detail in the late 1960s and early 1970s. After he left MAD in 1987, he continued to work for the rival publication Cracked.
See also: Sergio Aragones, Dave Berg, Al Jaffee
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Last updated: 10-29-2005 02:13:46
