Gag cartoonist John Caldwell, best known for his work for National Lampoon, The New Yorker and MAD magazine, died at 1 AM this morning. He had been battling cancer for some time.
Caldwell was born in 1946 in Cohoes, an upstate town in New York. He claimed to be largely self-taught as a cartoonist, though he did take a few terms at an art institute, the Parsons School of Design. He worked as a short order cook, operated a machine that folded handkerchiefs and as a cartographer for the state of New York. It was while he was laboring at the last of these jobs that he worked up the courage to begin submitting gag cartoons to magazines. This was back when there were a lot of magazines that bought gag cartoons.
He collected many, many rejections before breaking in with Screw magazine. He told me when I interviewed him for my book MAD Art, "Just my luck. I made my first sale to a magazine so vile, I couldn't show it to my family." Eventually, he got into National Lampoon, where his work caught the eye of MAD editor Nick Meglin.
Meglin called Caldwell to offer praise…but not work since at the time, MAD had all the artists it could handle. But Caldwell — long a fan of the publication — parlayed the call into an invite to tour the MAD offices. But a few years later, Caldwell sold them an article and a few years later, he sold them a few more…and by the nineties, he was a regular contributor.
His work fitted perfectly into MAD since it was always a little off-center and bizarre. It was also very funny. We're all sad to lose a talented guy like that.