Will Elder
| Will Elder | |
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Will Elder self-portrait
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| Born | Wolf William Eisenberg September 22, 1921 Bronx, New York, United States |
| Died | May 15, 2008 (aged 86) Rockleigh, New Jersey, United States |
| Nationality | American |
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Notable works
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Mad Little Annie Fanny |
William Elder (September 22, 1921 – May 15, 2008) was an American illustrator and comic book artist who worked in numerous areas of commercial art but is best known for a zany cartoon style that helped launch Harvey Kurtzman's Mad comic book in 1952.
Playboy publisher Hugh Hefner said, "He was a zany, and a lovable one." Longtime Mad writer-cartoonist Al Jaffee called Elder "Absolutely brilliant... he was the star from the beginning. He had a feel for the kind of satire that eventually spread everywhere."
Elder was inducted into the Comic Book Hall of Fame in 2003.
Born Wolf William Eisenberg in the Bronx, New York, Elder was known in his teen years as Wolfie. Elder would later joke about his poor slum upbringing: "The people who had garbage were rich; they had something to throw out." Elder attended New York's High School of Music and Art together with future Mad artists Harvey Kurtzman, John Severin, Al Jaffee and Al Feldstein. During World War II, he served as a part of the 668th Engineer Company (Topographical) of the First Army, as part of the mapmaking team in advance of the invasion of Normandy. Sometime after returning home, he adopted the name Will Elder.
In the late 1940s, Elder and former classmate Kurtzman teamed with Charles Stern to form the Charles William Harvey Studio, creating comics between 1948 and 1951 for Prize Comics and other publishers. At EC Comics, he inked Severin's pencils on stories for Weird Fantasy, Two-Fisted Tales, Frontline Combat and other titles.
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Wikipedia