From a New York Times obit on caricaturist Mort Drucker by J. Hoberrman:
Mort Drucker, a longtime contributor to Mad magazine known for his caricatures of actors, politicians and other celebrities, died on Thursday at his home in Woodbury, N.Y. He was 91. . . .
Mr. Drucker, who specialized in illustrating Mad’s movie and television satires, inspired several generations of cartoonists. . . .
His drawing for a 1970 Time magazine cover, “Battle for the Senate,” now in the National Portrait Gallery, featured a pileup of 15 individually characterized political figures, including President Richard M. Nixon and Vice President Spiro T. Agnew. . . .
Mr. Drucker compared his method to creating a movie storyboard: “I become the ‘camera,’” he once said, “and look for angles, lighting, close-ups, wide angles, long shots — just as a director does to tell the story in the most visually interesting way he can.”. . .
Mr. Drucker was modest about his gifts. “When I started working for Mad, they assigned me TV satires and asked me to draw famous people,” he recalled. “So I just did it. It took me a long time to learn the skills I have, and it was time-consuming. With me, everything is trial and error.”
Mr. Drucker also illustrated children’s books and contributed to the vogue for adult coloring books, collaborating with the comedy writer Paul Laikin on “The JFK Coloring Book,” which sold hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of copies in 1962. Between 1984 and 1987, he collaborated on the syndicated newspaper strip “Benchley,” which revolved around a fictional assistant to President Ronald Reagan.
Reagan, whom Mr. Drucker once caricatured as the Godfather, Moses, Scrooge and a slavering Mr. Hyde in a 1982 Mad story, “Ronald Reagan — Now Starring at the White House,” written by Stan Hart, was evidently a fan of the strip and treated Mr. Drucker and his wife to a private tour of the White House. . . .
But not everyone was so pleased. According to Mr. Hendrix, Mad’s 1981 parody of “The Empire Strikes Back,” “The Empire Strikes Out,” prompted the Lucasfilm legal department to send a cease-and-desist letter demanding that the issue be recalled. “Mad replied by sending a copy of another letter they had received the previous month — from George Lucas, offering to buy the original artwork for the ‘Empire’ parody and comparing Mort Drucker to Leonardo da Vinci.”
Mr. Lucas knew Mr. Drucker’s work well. He had commissioned one of Mr. Drucker’s classic multicharacter pileups as the poster for his first hit, “American Graffiti” — a nostalgic movie set in the same summer “The JFK Coloring Book” was a best seller. And, of course, Mr. Drucker had illustrated Mad’s sendup, “American Confetti.”
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