Alfred newman photo8/30/2023 The mystery of that first postcard remained, however. A veteran commercial illustrator, Mingo was tasked with painting Neuman for his first cover appearance on MAD, where he was drawn as a write-in presidential candidate, once again sporting his famous tagline. Neuman’s most famous incarnation was originally the work of an illustrator named Norman Mingo. “It was a kid that didn’t have a care in the world, except mischief,” Kurtzman said, according to Frank Jacobs, author of Totally Mad: 60 Years of Humor, Satire, Stupidity and Stupidity. At that point he didn’t have a name: he was just, as Kurtzman later called him, a “bumpkin portrait,” “part leering wiseacre, part happy-go-lucky kid.” The postcard featured an early version of Neuman’s famous mug, captioned “Me Worry?” Soon after, Kurtzman began sprinkling miniature versions of the drawing throughout MAD’s margins, usually paired with some iteration of that original caption, Sam Sweet writes for the Paris Review. But while MAD might have made the fictional character an icon, his origins remained murky for many years.Īs the story goes, Neuman’s appearance was inspired by an illustrated postcard spotted by MAD’s founder Harvey Kurtzman in the early 1950s. Ever since the big-eared redhead first graced the satirical magazine’s cover in December 1956, Neuman has become synonymous with MAD, appearing on almost every cover since. There is no image more evocative of MAD magazine than the grinning, gap-toothed, freckled face of its mascot, Alfred E.
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