Jack Rickard
- For Jack Rickard who edited Boardwatch magazine, see Boardwatch
Jack Rickard (1922–1983), an illustrator for numerous advertising campaigns, was best known as a key contributor to Mad for more than two decades.
After attending the Rochester Institute of Technology on an art scholarship, Rickard did commercial art for Chaite Studios in the 1950s. He contributed to Charlton Comics and worked as an assistant on the Li'l Abner comic strip. Soon after, he became a mainstay in the advertising field, where his work attracted the attention of Mad's editors. He began illustrating for the humor magazine in 1961.
Comic strip
In 1966–67, he collaborated with Mell Lazarus on a newspaper comic strip, Pauline McPeril (aka The Adventures of Pauline McPeril) for Publishers-Hall Syndicate. Lazarus used the pseudonym "Fulton" on this strip, which followed the misadventures of blonde secret agent McPeril. The strip was described in the age regression website 2 Be Young Again:
- The Adventures of Pauline McPeril was a short-lived comic strip by Mad artist Jack Rickard that starred a dumb blonde secret agent who successfully bungled her way through various intrigues. An AR plot was featured in November-December 1967. In that sequence, the notorious Doctor Shrinkman had devised a formula that turned people into little kids. As he worked for the enemy, he used his formula on other agents working for the same spy group as McPeril. The Doctor, McPeril, trying to slip her a very youthful Mickey in a cocktail glass while the two are out on a date. Pauline tests the old spinning the table gag to confuse Shrinkman, who downs his own formula and turns into a five-year-old boy in a lumpy suit. Instead of jail, Shrinkman is sent to nursery school. At the time this sequence ran, the only major paper still carrying Pauline McPeril was the Philadelphia Bulletin.[1]
Mad
Mad editor Nick Meglin commented, "I think of all the artists we've had, we miss Jack the most. Jack had so many styles, such a total command of all techniques. He was especially useful when we wanted something to have a real rounded, 3-D look to it." After the 1980 death of Norman Mingo, Rickard became Mad's main cover artist until his own death three years later.
He also illustrated for the original Mad paperbacks, including Frank Jacobs' Mad About Sports (1972). Some of his Mad work was reprinted in Richard Linklater's Dazed and Confused: Teenage Nostalgia. Instant and Cool 70's Memorabilia (MCA, 1993), a tie-in with Linklater's 1993 film, Dazed and Confused.
Posters
Rickard's style was in demand for movie promotions. He did the poster art for two Sidney Poitier movies, Uptown Saturday Night and Let's Do It Again, and for two Peter Sellers films, the 1963 film The Pink Panther and the 1974 Soft Beds, Hard Battles (aka Party for Hitler and Undercovers Hero). He created both the original movie poster for Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice and its parody on the cover of Mad #137.
References
External links
- Complete list of Jack Rickard's Mad contributions
- American Art Archives: Jack Rickard
- Weirdo's Corner