Jack Davis, the prolific Mad magazine illustrator, cartoonist and movie poster artist, has died.
He died Wednesday morning, according to his son-in-law, Chris Lloyd. He passed away in St. Simons, Georgia, of natural causes. He was 91.
As a struggling young artist in New York, Davis was “about ready to give up, go home to Georgia and be either a forest ranger or a farmer,” he recalled in an interview a few years ago. Then, in 1950, he scored the first of many sales of his artwork to EC Comics, which published a line of horror titles including Tales from the Crypt.
He stuck with its editors — William M. Gaines, Albert B. Feldstein and Harvey Kurtzman — when they launched the pioneering satire magazine Mad in 1952. He remained a member of “The Usual Gang of Idiots” (as the magazine billed them) for the next six decades. His far-flung illustrations poked fun at politicians and celebrities along with countless portraits of the magazine’s perpetually grinning mascot, Alfred E. Neuman.
Along the way, Davis also created numerous covers for TV Guide and Time, and provided artwork for books, record jackets, and posters for films including It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, American Graffiti and Woody Allen’s Bananas.