Feldstein died Tuesday, April 29. This MSN obit says he was editor from 1956-84, but the Wikipedia entry claims 1956-85. I remember him saying that if he could have had his way, MAD would've accepted paid advertising during his tenure, but publisher Bill Gaines was opposed to it.

http://entertainment.msn.com/news/ar...px?news=864921

Loved mad magazine as a kid. That's a really good obituary.

I also loved his work on the EC comics.

As editor of Mad Magazine and editor of Marvel Comics, Al Feldstein and Stan Lee were probably my biggest cultural influences during my formative years. Amazing that they both lasted so long into my life as I head into my seventh decade. Lee, of course, is still around and still very active.

Even though I was a film buff as a child, my cultural consciousness was much more wired into Mad Magazine and Marvel Comics during my adolescence rather than any particular group of filmmakers. When I was in college, I gravitated away from Marvel Comics and more into classic films and auteurs. But I kept with Mad Magazine well into the 1990s.

Mad was an important part of my childhood. I didn't watch much television, but I was subscribed to Mad from age ten.

I read a lot of Mad as a kid, but didn't know a lot of the pop culture they were spoofing. Movies such as The Cowboys and True Grit I first read in Mad and didn't actually watch till many years later, if ever. And I ate up the cartoons: Dave Berg, Don Martin, Sergio Aragones, Spy vs. Spy...many I also read in paperback.

Never read Mad as a kid unless it featured a recent movie on the cover that I was a fan of (I think the Jaws 2 issue was the first I ever bought).
But upon discovering the ECs in the mid 80's via the big B&W Russ Cochran library sets, I immediately fell in love with his very unique and idiosyncratic style.
For my money, only Wood and possibly Davis were better at spotting black on the page. Like so many of the artists in that stable, his work shines even brighter for me in B&W than it does in color.
And next to Nick Cardy, he's still one of my absolute favorite cover artists.
He's also the primary reason (along with Jack Kamen, who it seems I'm one of the very few fans of) that I still own the Cochran set of Modern Love/Romance.

Amongst the man's many huge gifts and talents, he illustrated some of the best "headlight" panels and covers of all time







(that last one displays a little more Kamen than Feldstein...but what the hell)

Feldstein was definitely an unheralded legend in the comic field. Besides being the long time editor for MAD he also was story editor for all of EC's other titles and still found time to do covers for the books and even illustrate a story occasionally.