A GALLERY OF PAUL COKER ART FROM MAD MAGAZINE

Katy Nisan 29, 2022

Paul Coker's art was not as broad or slapstick as the art of most other MAD artists, but in his own quiet way he was every bit as brilliant.

Look at this lovely little drawing of a boy standing. He's not being carried off by a gorilla or balancing a ball on his nose. Yet, Coker keeps his subject from being dull and symmetrical by adding a dozen charming touches: notice the unusual shape of the bottom of his sweat shirt, or the interesting shape of his collar, how only one pant leg is rolled up and the other has a patch. Notice the confidence of Coker's folds over the boy's stomach or at his elbow.

In an era when the New Yorker features a bevy of untalented cover artists who use lifeless mechanical circles for heads, look at how much sensitivity Coker puts into this "almost' circle head-- the subtlety of that chin, those little boy cheeks, the treatment of that vacant ear, the shape of that hat-- all before you even get to that marvelous facial expression described in so few lines. In my opinion, Coker's better than all of them.

Another splendid drawing now shows the boy in motion. Notice how beautifully Coker captures the running figure, with those over-sized shoes kicking up pebbles.

You won't find the silhouette of that leg and disjointed ankle in any anatomy book.

If you have any question about how many of the subtle touches in that figure are intentional, look at the way Coker used white paint to trim back that shoe on the left. He felt that 1/64 of an inch made enough difference that it was worth going back to tweak. Clearly Coker is performing micro-surgery in these drawings.

It's to MAD's credit that, amidst all the clang and clatter of the Don Martin and Al Jaffee and Prohias, it appreciated the quiet brilliance of Coker.

Here's a gallery of other Coker drawings, enlarged so you can better see what he was up to.

Note how Coker handles the small boy clinging to his mother's leg: no eyes, just nostrils and a very unusually shaped mouth. There are great powers of observation and great artistic courage in these small choices.