Paul Laikin

Paul I. Laikin (died May 12, 2012) was an American comedy writer-editor for books, television, recordings, trading cards and magazines, including Mad and New York. Satirist Jay Lynch commented, "He was an important figure in the world of whatever that is, that Mad magazine, post-World War II satire thing." Publisher Jim Warren called him "one of the funniest minds in the world."

Born in Brooklyn, Laikin graduated in 1944 from James Madison High School. In 1945, he was drafted into the United States Army and sent to Germany, where he attained the rank of corporal while playing bugle calls for the troops. He was stationed at the former Dachau concentration camp (then a prison for Germans convicted of war crimes).

Returning home in 1947, he studied English at Columbia University and began writing for leading comedians, including Jackie Gleason, Milton Berle, Jan Murray, Ed Wynn and Alan King. In 1957, he started writing for Mad and later contributed to other humor magazines. He replaced Harvey Kurtzman as the editor of Jim Warren's Wildest Westerns magazine. For three years he was the editor of Cracked.

During the 1960s, he was the head writer on several comedy game shows, including The Baby Game, Let's Play Post Office and Reach for the Stars.

In 1962, Laikin teamed with cartoonist Mort Drucker on the highly successful JFK Coloring Book (Kanrom Publishers), which sold 2,500,000 copies, prompting follow-up coloring books on Ollie North and Ronald Reagan. They did JFK Coloring Book in 1962 and The Ollie North Coloring Book in 1987. Drucker described Laikin as "kind of quiet... He wasn't a forward kind of person, unless you got to know him," noting that he had "a good sense of humor and good knowledge of politics."

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