Dave Berg

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Berg_(cartoonist)

Dave Berg (Brooklyn, June 12, 1920 – May 17, 2002) was an American cartoonist, most noted for his five decades of work in Mad.

Berg showed early artistic talents, attending Pratt Institute when he was 12 years old, and later studying at Cooper Union. He served a period of time in the Army Air Corps. In 1940, he joined Will Eisner's studio, where he wrote and drew for the Quality Comics line. Berg's work also appeared in Dell Comics and Fawcett Publications, typically on humorous back-up features. Beginning in the mid-1940s, he worked for several years with Stan Lee on comic books at Timely Comics (now known as Marvel Comics), ranging from Combat Kelly and The Ringo Kid to Tessie the Typist. He also freelanced for a half-dozen other companies, including EC Comics.[2][3]

Contents [show] Mad[edit] Berg began at Mad in 1956. For five years, he provided satirical looks at areas such as Little League baseball, boating and babysitting. In 1961, he started the magazine's "Lighter Side" feature, his most famous creation. Berg would take an omnibus topic (such as "Noise," "Spectators" or "Dog Owners") and deliver approximately 15 short multi-panel cartoons on the subject. In later years, he dropped the one-topic approach. Berg often included caricatures of his own family, headed by his cranky, hypochondriac alter-ego, Roger Kaputnik, as well as the Mad editorial staff.

His artistic style made Berg one of the more realistic Mad artists, although his characters managed to sport garish early-1970s wardrobes well into the 1990s. The art chores for a 1993 article, "The First Day of School 30 Years Ago and Today" were split between Berg and Rick Tulka, since Berg's old-fashioned appeal made him an ideal choice to depict the gentle nostalgia of 1963. The artist's lightweight gags and sometimes moralistic tone were roughly satirized by the National Lampoon's 1971 Mad parody, which included a hard-hatted conservative and a longhaired hippie finding their only common ground by choking and beating Berg. However, "The Lighter Side" had a long run as the magazine's most popular feature. Mad editor Nick Meglin often did layouts of "Lighter Side" panels. Sixteen original collections by Berg were published as paperbacks between 1964 and 1987.[2]

Berg held an honorary doctorate in theology. He produced regular religious-themed work for Moshiach Times and the B'nai Brith newsletter. His interaction with Mad's atheist publisher Bill Gaines was suitably irreverent: Berg would tell Gaines, "God bless you," and Gaines would reply, "Go to Hell."

Fellow Mad contributor Al Jaffee described Berg's unique personality in 2009: "Dave had a messianic complex of some sort. He was battling... he had good and evil inside of him, clashing all the time. It was sad, in a sense, because he wanted to be taken very seriously, and you know, the staffers at Mad just didn't take anything seriously. Most of all, ourselves... It came out in a lot of the things he did. He had a very moralistic personality... He wrote a book called My Friend God. And of course, if you write a book like that, you just know that the Mad staff is going to make fun of you. We would ask him questions like, "Dave, when did you and God become such good friends? Did you go to college together, or what?"[4]

His characters occasionally made their way into other artists' works, such as Kaputnik finding himself a patient in a Mort Drucker spoof of St. Elsewhere, tagged "with apologies to Dave Berg".[5]

Berg contributed to Mad until his death, a total of 46 years. His last set of "Lighter Side" strips, which had been written but not penciled, were illustrated after Berg's death by 18 of Mad's other artists as a final tribute; this affectionate send-off included the magazine's final new contribution from Jack Davis. In recent years, Berg's Lighter Side strips have been rewritten for Mad with inappropriately "un-Berg-like" humor by long time Mad writer Dick DeBartolo and others; this irregular feature is called "The Darker Side of the Lighter Side."

Berg's other work included the comic strips Citizen Senior (1989–93), Roger Kaputnik (1992) and Astronuts (1994).

Death[edit] After a long battle with cancer, he died in his home in Marina del Rey, California, shortly after midnight on May 17, 2002. Berg was survived by his wife of 52 years, Vivian, and their two children.[2]

Mad Magazine Cartoonist Dave Berg, 81, Dies in L.A. Fri May 24, 8:54 PM ET By Dan Whitcomb

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Dave Berg, whose irreverent and affectionate cartoons for Mad magazine captured "The Lighter Side" of life in suburban America for more than 40 years, has died, his daughter said on Friday. He was 81.

Berg, whose expertly drawn strips largely ignored current events and political issues of the day to poke fun at the foibles of American life, died on May 17 of cancer at his home in the Los Angeles suburb of Marina del Rey, Nancy Berg said.

She said her father, who had been battling cancer and would have turned 82 on June 12, died shortly after midnight with his wife of 52 years, Vivian, and their two children at his side.

The Brooklyn, New York-born Berg began freelancing for Mad magazine in 1956 and started his best-known feature, "The Lighter Side of..." five years later, skewering such staples of everyday American life as a trip to the car mechanic or battles over the living room television set.

The strip often skewered Berg's own family, headed by his cranky alter-ego, Roger Kaputnik. Vivian Berg, who was also a cartoonist, and his children also figured in the plots.

Nancy Berg said her father's comic strips so expertly pegged the human condition that psychologists would keep them on file to show frustrated patients.

"They would keep them handy so they could bring them out and say, 'Look, you're not the only one. Even Dave Berg is writing about this,"' she said.

Nancy Berg said that her father's sense of humor spilled over into his personal life, where he was known for great warmth. He was a minor celebrity in New Rochelle, New York, where he grew up and where the family lived before moving to California, she said.

Berg, who was born in 1920, showed a penchant for drawing as a young boy and attended Cooper Union Art School in New York before getting a job, along with artist Jules Feiffer, in the studio of comic artist Will Eisner.

After World War Two, where he served in the Army Air Corps and as a war correspondent, Berg worked for "Spider-Man" artist Stan Lee before joining Mad.

Nancy Berg said a public memorial service would be planned next month for her father, whose remains have been cremated.