William (Will or Bill) W. Elder, Comic Genius. Born Sept. 22, 1922 in New York. The late William M. Gaines once called him "the funniest artist Mad ever had."

A friend of Mad Magazine creator Harvey Kurtzman's since high school, Bill Elder was with Mad from the first issue to the last (last of the classic Mad, that is) in 1956 when Kurtzman left.

Elder had already been with Mad publisher EC Comics for several years before Mad, where his main task had been inking John Severin's comics (mostly War and Horror stories). Mad finally gave him opportunity to express his (occasionally very) absurd and zany type of humour.

His masterpices for Mad include "Shermlock Shomes!","Shermlock Shomes in The hound of the basketballs","Shadow!","Mole!" and "Frank N. Stein".

He has worked on a lot of minor projects after Mad, one of them being "Little Annie Fanny", written by Harvey Kurtzman, which was published in Playboy from 1962 to 1988.

He is still not dead.

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