Дон Мартин: «Mad» журналының сатирик суретшісі

American cartoonist

Don Martin (May 18, 1931 – January 6, 2000) was an American cartoonist whose best known work was published in Mad from 1956 to 1988. His popularity and prominence were such that the magazine promoted Martin as "Mad's Maddest Artist."

Born on May 18, 1931, in Paterson, New Jersey, and raised in nearby Brookside and Morristown, Martin studied illustration and fine art at Newark School of Fine and Industrial Arts between 1949 and 1951 and subsequently graduated from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia in 1952. In 1953, he worked briefly as a window trimmer and frame maker before providing paste ups and mechanicals for various offset printing clients and beginning his career as freelance cartoonist and illustrator. Martin's work first appeared in Mad in the September 1956 issue. Martin suffered from eye problems his entire life. He underwent two corneal transplants: the first in 1949, at the age of 18, and the second forty years later in 1989. After the first procedure, Martin's head had to be held in place for three days by a pair of sandbags to prevent movement. Just prior to his work with Mad, Don Martin illustrated the album covers of a few legendary jazz artists for Prestige Records, including Miles Davis' 1956 album Miles Davis and Horns (Prestige LP 7025). He also did The Art Farmer Septet (Prestige LP 7031), Sonny Stitt / Bud Powell / J. J. Johnson (Prestige LP 7024), Kai Winding's Trombone By Three (Prestige LP 7023) and Stan Getz' The Brothers (Prestige LP 7022). "They're still using these covers," Martin told the Orlando Sentinel in 1985. "I got $50." He also drew greeting cards, and illustrations for jazz and science fiction magazines.

Martin brought his portfolio to the Mad offices in 1956 and was immediately given an assignment. "The drawings that I first brought to them were kind of tight," he later recalled. "There was a very tight kind of design quality — I was using a very fine line. They encouraged me to loosen up a little bit and that’s what I did." Although Martin's contributions invariably featured outrageous events and sometimes outright violations of the laws of space time, his strips typically had unassuming generic titles such as "A Quiet Day in the Park" or "One Afternoon at the Beach." The six panel "The Impressionist" features a bull who becomes a famous artist by smearing an outdoor painter against his canvas and displaying his remains as an abstract design. The four panel "One Night in the Miami Bus Terminal" presents a man who approaches a machine labeled "Change," inserts a dollar bill, and changes to a woman. In another gag, a man is flattened by a steamroller but is saved by the intervention of two passersby, who fold him as a paper airplane and throw him to the nearest hospital.

In his last years of working with Mad, Martin had a falling out with publisher William Gaines over royalties for the paperback compilations of older Mad articles and cartoons released under new omnibus titles, such as The Self Made Mad. Gaines insisted that Martin's original page rate was for both publication in Mad and all future reprints in any format. Martin objected, claiming at one point that he had likely lost over $1 million in royalties because of this "flat rate" for this work. Martin later testified before a Congressional subcommittee on the rights of freelance artists. "As far as I could tell, he was happy," said fellow Cracked artist Dan Clowes. "I don't think he ever seemed to notice that Mad was respected, whereas Cracked was loathed." After six years with Cracked, Martin parted company with the magazine. A year later, he launched his own short lived publication, Don Martin Magazine. This included reprints from some of his original Mad paperbacks to which he had retained copyrights. The first issue included an otherwise nonsensical Martin "interview" conducted by Martin himself, in which he said, "My agent thinks I was nuts to have worked there [Mad] as long as I did," before expressing fondness for his time at Cracked. In 1991, Martin complained about Mads chummy and tribal atmosphere to the Los Angeles Times, saying, "It's looked upon by the people there as a good thing, like one big family. I came to realize that it's only a good thing for Bill Gaines. I was so terribly loyal all those years that I turned down work because I had something for Mad Magazine—which is ridiculous." From 1989 to 1993, Don Martin created a daily comic strip called The Nutheads, featuring a family that worked at "Glump's Market," a cluttered store. The characters included a mother and father, Hazel and Nutley, and their two children, Macadamia and baby Nutkin. It was briefly syndicated by Universal Press Syndicate; Martin later revived and self syndicated the strip. Despite a degenerative eye condition, Martin continued to draw through the 1990s using special magnifying equipment. Martin was a member of both the National Cartoonists Society and The Graphic Artists Guild (GAG). He resigned from GAG and returned a donation from them in 1997, following a dispute.

In 1972, after sitting for an interview with The Miami Herald, the newspaper wanted to take a photograph of Martin and his family to accompany the piece. Martin refused. However, he then drew impromptu life sized character masks, which Martin, his wife Rosemary, and son Max obligingly wore over their faces for the published portrait. He remarried in 1979, taking Norma Haines (Martin) as his new wife. Their marriage lasted until his death. In 2000, he died of cancer in Coconut Grove, Florida at age 68.

Martin was honored with the Ignatz Award at the Orlando Comicon in 1980. He received the National Cartoonists Society's Special Features Award in both 1981 and 1982, Martin strips have also been adapted on Cartoon Network's Mad and the Fox sketch program MADtv. The name of the Fone Bone character in cartoonist Jeff Smith's epic graphic novel Bone is derived from Fonebone, the generic surname that Martin gave to many of the characters that appeared in his Mad magazine strips. In episode No. 307, "The Day the Earth Stood Stupid" (2001), of Matt Groening's science fiction animated television series Futurama, lead character Hermes Conrad mentions a planet called "Don Martin 3" that went "kerflooey", an homage to one of Martin's sound effects. The "Stranded in Space" film shown on TV's Mystery Science Theater 3000 (episode 305) included various visual weapon sound effects (e. g., a gun with a flag which pops out, bearing the sound effect "BANG!"). After a stick of dynamite produced a banner reading "KACHOW", one of the show's characters wondered, "Kachow? Kachow?! What, is Don Martin working with you guys now?!" In 2007, a two volume hardcover box set of Martin's complete Mad magazine work was published by Running Press. Taking their cue from one of Martin's more celebrated stories, National Gorilla Suit Day, fans have celebrated National Gorilla Suit Day by wearing gorilla suits on January 31. No specific date is given in the story, which appeared in the 1963 paperback book Don Martin Bounces Back.