MAD's Maddest Artist Don Martin Bounces Back!

 

By Don Martin

A selection of Don Martin's comics, featuring mainly his characters Fester and Karbunkle. 

It opens with National Gorilla-Suit Day where Fester is upset about people celebrating National Gorilla-Suit Day by dressing up in gorilla suits. The conclusion: 

And A Visit To the Dentist which does not go well for poor Fester.

Followed by The Hardest Head in the World which is a satire of boxing movies. It stars Karbunkle as the man with the hardest head in the world. He becomes very famous but the high life causes him to lose his tone and his head shatters when a feather falls on it. But all is not lost, Fester puts him through a strict training programming. Karbunkle hardens up again and the story ends with him being dropped from a plane, head first, onto an Egyptian pyramid. 

Then Fester and Karbunkle star in Swan Lake. Fester appears as Prince Siegfried and Karbunkle as the Swan Maiden. Karbunkle presents Fester with an egg at the end when Fester was expecting a kiss.

Next is The Barber with Fester as a barber who unfortunately accidentally cuts off his client's nose.

After that is The Gourmet in which Fester eats a wet mop, thinking it is a delicious plate of spaghetti. How it ends: 

The final story is The Painters. Fester and Karbunkle are house painters and Fester ends up in the toilet.

These funnies are funny and crazy and fine examples of Don Martin's work. My copy of the book is dated 1963.  But even though the cartoons are more than sixty years old, they are still so much wacky fun to read and look at.

MAD'S Maddest Artist Don Martin Steps Out!

By Don Martin

I think this was the first collection of Don Martin cartoons. It was certainly the first collection of his that I read as a kid. I remember so many of the cartoons in that book. Coming back to it decades later, I still enjoyed Martin's silly sense of humor. And I think these early cartoons among his best.

This collection includes:
1. Fester and Karbunkle Out West
2. Fester Goes Ski Jumping
3. Fester and Karbunkle The Motor Trip
4. Fester and Karbunkle The Safe Movers
5. Fester and Karbunkle The Roller Coaster Ride
6. Sylvan Interlude in a Petunia Patch
7. Karbunkle in The Penny Arcade
8. Fester and Karbunkle in A Department Store

When I was a kid and trying to go to sleep, I would imagine the various stages of Fester's experience in A Department Store.

MAD's Don Martin Carries On

By Don Martin, Dick DeBartolo and Frank Jacobs

A collection of cartoons by Don Martin, including
One Wednesday Morning at the Hospital
One Afternoon in the Garden
One Sunny Day in Key West
Captain Klutz Meets the Man of 1,000 Faces (Give or Take 900) written by Dick DeBartolo
One Morning in the Operating Room
The Ballad of Arthur Freen written by Frank Jacobs
One Monday Afternoon at Joe's Concrete Works
Cockroaches
The Scientist in his Laboratory
Star Spangled Bananas written by Dick DeBartolo
And more!