Will Elder

Mention the name Will Elder and the Hairy Green Eyeball starts to sparkle. Elder was one of the hairy one's heroes in the 1950s and 1960s, via his Mad comic book stories, reprinted in the Mad series of paperback books. Mad Reader, Inside Mad, Mad Strikes Back….

Oh man, a tear starts to glisten when I think about them…

Will Elder, who was born Wolf William Eisenberg, died last week. He was 86 years old. For several years after he did Mad he collaborated with Harvey Kurtzman on Little Annie Fanny for Playboy magazine. The Hairy Green Eyeball bounced lovingly off many of those pages, sure enough!

But, this amateur fanzine covers just the work that Elder did in the EC comic books of the early 1950s, both for his friend and editor, Harvey Kurtzman on Mad and the Mad imitator, Panic, published by the same company. It's Melvin, printed by photocopy, was published in 1995 and was the only issue. The editor, writer and publisher, Par Holman, had plans to cover all of the artists that lit up the Eyeball: Jack Davis, Wally Wood, and Harvey Kurtzman, but like a lot of plans they went by the wayside. Only about 10 copies of this magazine were distributed, and the Eyeball is lucky to have one. Now you get to see it too, and all you have to do is click on the images to make them BIGGER!