George Woodbridge, a longtime Mad cartoonist died this week. He was 73. I always thought he had a low opinion of human beings, because he drew them so ugly. Not cartoony ugly, like Basil Wolverton, but blotchy and smelly and decaying from the inside out. He was a damn fine artist, though.
Known for his delicately crosshatched pen-and-ink style, he was equally adept at caricature, at evoking historical styles and skewering Madison Avenue. A typical Woodbridge target was the suburban dweller, who progressed over the years from his early-1960's incarnation as a commuter-train-chasing executive in a button-down shirt to his overweight, barbecuing 1970's counterpart clad in polyester and plaid.
