When Mort Drucker answered a want ad placed by Mad in the New York Times, he was unprepared for the reception he received. Associate Editor Nick Meglin was impressed with the portfolio of hundreds of comics Drucker had created and illustrated, including war comics, westerns, and humor comics, and quickly took it for review to Bill Gaines and Al Feldstein, who were engrossed in a Brooklyn Dodgers game. "If the Dodgers win you're hired," Gaines gleefully informed Drucker. Luckily, they did, and Drucker was enlisted on the spot. After joining the Usual Gang of idiots, Drucker's talent for caricature came to the fore.

The editorial staff at Mad encouraged him to develop his own style, combining the forms of continuity illustration and caricature for television and movie parodies. This challenged Drucker not only to capture a recognizable likeness of a subject, but also to show that person realistically engaged in various activities over a series of panels.

Drucker's portraits have also frequently occupied the cover of Time Magazine-over fifteen have appeared since 1970-and seven of the original drawings have found a home in the National Portrait Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution.

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