{"id":38794230,"date":"2008-05-19T04:09:19","date_gmt":"2008-05-19T04:09:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.casey.com\/2008\/05\/goodbye-mole.html"},"modified":"2013-04-09T00:16:12","modified_gmt":"2013-04-09T00:16:12","slug":"200805goodbye-mole-html","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/casey.life\/blog\/2008\/05\/19\/200805goodbye-mole-html\/","title":{"rendered":"Goodbye Mole!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Media_httpcaseycomblo_aejag\" src=\"http:\/\/cmcimport.files.wordpress.com\/2008\/05\/media_httpcaseycomblo_aejag-scaled500.jpg\" width=\"251\" height=\"232\" align=\"right\" hspace=\"10\" vspace=\"5\" \/>As a kid, I was introduced to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dccomics.com\/mad\/\">Mad Magazine<\/a> by my older brothers. It was outrageous and funny in a way you knew your parents would not approve, which made it somehow even more enjoyable. From time to time, MAD would re-cycle old material, by including a reprint of one of their earlier issues from the 50&#8217;s, and it is from those reissues that I was introduced to the work of one of Mad&#8217;s original artists, <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Will_Elder\">Will Elder<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>It was in the second issue of MAD that Elder&#8217;s comic &#8216;MOLE!&#8217;, in which criminal Melvin Mole has a talent for digging with whatever he has at hand (a spoon, a toothpick, a nosehair), and when arrested and re-arrested after digging his way out of jail, he is tossed into his cell with the line, &#8220;In-side Mole!&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>Mole was just one of Elder&#8217;s many creations. He also created a hilarious parody of the Archie comics with this take titled &#8216;Starchie&#8217;, and his comic &#8216;Shermlock Holmes&#8217; pariodied, well, you figure it out. It was not until reading his obituary in the Washington Post yesterday that I was aware that Elder was also the creator of &#8216;<a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Little_Annie_Fanny\">Little Annie Fanny<\/a>&#8216;, a comic found in Playboy magazine that I never ever saw before, ever (because I was reading the articles of course).<\/p>\n<p>From the same obit, comes this tidbit of Mr. Elder&#8217;s sense of humor:<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"posterous_medium_quote\"><p>Among the pranks that earned the young Mr. Elder renown: putting clothes on cattle carcasses from a meat-processing factory, placing them at railroad crossings and screaming to horrified passersby that his friend &#8220;Moshe&#8221; had been killed.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Wow. R.I.P. Will Elder, and thanks for the laughs.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-dyn\/content\/article\/2008\/05\/16\/AR2008051603691.html\">Will Elder, 86; Zany Cartoonist for Mad and Playboy<\/a><br \/>\n<em>The Washington Post<\/em>, 5\/17\/08<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As a kid, I was introduced to Mad Magazine by my older brothers. It was outrageous and funny in a way you knew your parents would not approve, which made it somehow even more enjoyable. From time to time, MAD would re-cycle old material, by includ&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38794230","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-humor"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3mOvc-2CM9o","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/casey.life\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38794230","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/casey.life\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/casey.life\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casey.life\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casey.life\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38794230"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/casey.life\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38794230\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":173354345,"href":"https:\/\/casey.life\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38794230\/revisions\/173354345"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/casey.life\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38794230"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casey.life\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38794230"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casey.life\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38794230"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}