At long last, the legendary humor cartoonist gets the book he so richly deserves, a gigantic coffee-table book that collects his best work from over a half a century of drawing and painting. Elder cut his teeth as one of EC Comics' stable of cartoonists, gifted with the chameleonlike ability to duplicate any other artist's style. This talent served him in good stead when he became one of the founding contributors to the company's new humor comic, Mad — the first of what would turn out to be a lifetime of collaborations between Elder and comic-book visionary Harvey Kurtzman. Together the two would go on to blaze a trail through American culture that still influences us today, from Goodman Beaver to Little Annie Fanny. The book collects a representative sampling of the work already well-known to aficionados, most reprinted from the original artwork, and also contains obscure and unpublished work for national magazines, gag sketches, celebrity caricatures, oil paintings done for his family, and much more. Finally, the book includes commentary by Hugh Hefner, Harvey Kurtzman, Jack Davis, Al Jaffee, Terry Gilliam, William Stout, and Jerry Garcia, who describe the impact that Elder's work had on satire and comic art. Elder himself comments on individual pieces, and Ghost World author Daniel Clowes provides the introduction.

"Will Elder is the funniest artist Mad ever had, just pure mayhem." – William Gaines, publisher of Mad

"He could have been the world's greatest forger, he has such an eye for color matching and detail." – Al Jaffee, Mad artist

A 20-minute documentary which shares a name with our book, in two parts on YouTube:

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