Nick Meglin 1935-2018

This art was for Nick’s “MAD Book” given to him at his retirement

Nick Meglin was the only person I ever knew who I would look forward to being insulted by.

The world got a little less funny and MAD Magazine lost a large part of its heart and soul yesterday with the sudden passing of Nick from a heart attack. He would have been 83 next month.

If there was an official title of “Unsung Hero of MAD Magazine”, Nick would without question wear that crown. While Al Feldstein got a lot of the credit (and MOST of the money) from the success of MAD, a major part of the “voice” of MAD, the part that really made MAD “MAD“, came from Nick. He understood humor better than anyone I’ve ever met. He knew what was funny, what was too easy, what was too complicated, was was exactly what the moment demanded. He had an innate sense of what worked as MAD humor and what did not. Beyond his editing skills, Nick wrote a great deal of material for MAD behind the scenes, uncredited of course, for not just many articles but for a lot of the “writer/artist” features that were staples of the magazine, and for which the single cartoonist creator got the sole byline. He ghost wrote material for many of the MAD paperbacks as well. He was selfless that way.

His credits in the MAD masthead started out in 1957 with “Ideas”, went to “War Correspondent”, “Editorial Associate”, “Associate Editor” and finally “Editor” until his retirement in 2004, after which we was credited occasionally as “Contributing Editor”. Of all those titles, “Ideas” probably comes the closest to what he actually did with MAD, but all of them pale in describing his actual impact on the magazine. He really was its heart and soul.

Nick (along with MAD art director Sam Viviano) was a true mentor to me. He was the first person associated with MAD I ever met. I showed him my work briefly at San Diego Comic Con in 1993. He was brutally honest saying this wasn’t good enough for MAD, but he was oddly encouraging at the same time, telling me to keep growing as an artist and show my work again somewhere down the road. “Somewhere down the road” was six years later in 1999 at the National Cartoonists Society Reuben weekend, when MAD book editor Charlie Kochman grabbed my portfolio and marched it straight up to Nick. He didn’t remember me from that early encounter but he had basically the same advice, not quite there but keep it up.

Later that year I started with Cracked and went to New York to once again show my work to Sam, this time at the MAD offices. To my surprise Nick and Sam took me to lunch at the Society of Illustrators. There Nick gave me some advice that literally changed my career. He told me that he liked the work I was doing, but that I was trying too hard to be Mort Drucker. “MAD doesn’t hire Mort Drucker clones” he said. “We don’t need to, we’ve got the real Mort Drucker.” He went on to say they dismiss artists who rip-off the style of their famous artists, but he was having lunch with me because he did not think I was one of those clones. He told me to stop trying to be Mort and start trying to be me. He told me he saw that I had it in me, and if I could do that I would be working for MAD one day. He was right about the heavy Mort influence. In doing these movie parodies for Cracked I was pouring over old copies of MAD, not consciously copying Mort but looking at how he composed his panels, drew his figures, paced the storytelling, etc. I put all my MADs away and started working without a net. At the NCS Reubens in 2000 I showed Sam and Nick my latest work, and this time they liked what they saw. I got my first assignment for MAD about a month after that Rueben weekend. In the eighteen years since, Nick has been a great supporter of my work, giving me invaluable advice and encouragement… when he wasn’t insulting me, that was.

Nick had a wicked sense of humor, and anyone who knew him understood that the more he loved and respected you, the more brutally he would insult you. Therefore an insult from Nick Meglin was a compliment. Here’s a story that best sums that up:

Shortly after my first few jobs for MAD I went to New York for their annual holiday party. Naturally I visited the MAD office when I was in town. Sam gave me a tour, and we were in the art production room at the end of the hall looking through their flat file drawers at some of the incredible originals from way back when I hear a voice roar from down the hall.

“RICHMOND’S HERE?!? WHERE IS THAT LOUSY HACK??”

I look up to see Nick storming down the hall, a few other in tow. He enters the art room, gets right up in my face, and bellows “I see you are looking at some REAL art done by actually TALENTED artists!I”. He proceeds to go into a two-minute tirade insulting everything about my work he could think of. He ended by jabbing his finger at me and saying:

“Let’s get this straight… I don’t like YOU! I don’t your ART! I don’t like your LOUSY caricatures! I don’t like your INKING! I don’t like your SHOES (jabs his finger at my feet)! I don’t like your drawing or your color work! What do you have to say about THAT??”

I’m standing wide eyed at this point with a crowd of staffers looking at me. Its deathly quiet for a beat or two and then I plead:

“What’s wrong with my shoes?”

Nick and the staff couldn’t keep a straight face after that. They all broke up at the shell-shocked Minnesota boy who just got “Meglined”. Nick grins and puts his hand up over my shoulder and behind my head, gives me a little shake and says “Welcome to the Usual Gang of Idiots!”

I treasured the four short years Nick was still on staff while I was contributing. More than that, I treasure the eighteen years I was privileged to be able to call Nick my friend. Anna and I loved him and his wonderful lady Linda dearly. We will miss him, our hearts are broken for Linda and his family, as well as for the many MAD people who knew him far longer and worked with him more closely than I. He was one of a kind. Thank God I got to spend some time with him at the NCS Reubens in Philly last weekend.

I’ll never be able to question my taste in shoes again without thinking of him.