Editing Dave Berg (cartoonist) (section)

==''Mad''==
Berg began at ''Mad'' in 1957, early in [[Al Feldstein]]'s term as editor. Berg had distinct facial features and was heavyset, so inducing Feldstein to write, ''Physically, Dave looks like he kept his nose to the grindstone a little too long, and the rest of his body in the steam room not long enough.''<ref>https://archive.org/details/madsdavebergloo00berg/page/n67/mode/2up MAD's Dave Berg looks at the U.S.A.,p.66.</ref>  For four years, he provided satirical looks at areas such as boating, babysitting, and baseball. In 1961, he started the magazine's [[The Lighter Side of...|"Lighter Side"]] feature, his most famous creation. Berg would take an omnibus topic (such as "Noise," "Spectators" or "Dog Owners") and deliver approximately 15 short multi-panel cartoons on the subject. Beginning in #218 (October 1980), he abandoned the thematic approach, and thereafter covered multiple topics in each article. Berg often included caricatures of his own family—headed by his cranky hypochondriac alter ego, Roger Kaputnik—as well as of the ''Mad'' editorial staff. Occasionally he drew fellow artists, including [[Don Martin (cartoonist)|Don Martin]] in #110 (April 1967) and [[Al Jaffee]] in #119 (June 1968).<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.mindsnackbooks.com/mad/mad_110.html|title = Mad #110}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.madmagazine.com/blog/2013/09/03/the-lighter-side-ofhobbies|title = The Lighter Side of...Hobbies|date = September 3, 2013}}</ref>

His artistic style made Berg one of the more realistic ''Mad'' artists, although his characters managed to sport garish early-1970s wardrobes well into the 1990s. The art chores for a 1993 article, "The First Day of School 30 Years Ago and Today", were split between Berg and [[Rick Tulka]], since Berg's old-fashioned appeal made him an ideal choice to depict the gentle nostalgia of 1963. The artist's lightweight gags and sometimes moralistic tone were roughly satirized by the ''[[National Lampoon (magazine)|National Lampoon]]'''s 1971 ''Mad'' parody, which included a hard-hatted conservative and a longhaired hippie finding their only common ground by choking and beating Berg. However, "The Lighter Side" had a long run as the magazine's most popular feature. ''Mad'' editor [[Nick Meglin]] often sketched layouts of "Lighter Side" panels. Sixteen original collections by Berg were published as paperbacks between 1964 and 1987.<ref name=reuters/>

Berg held an honorary doctorate in theology. He produced regular religious-themed work for ''Moshiach Times'' and the [[B'nai Brith]] newsletter. His interaction with ''Mad'''s atheist publisher [[Bill Gaines]] was suitably irreverent: Berg would tell Gaines, "God bless you," and Gaines would reply, "Go to Hell."<ref>{{Cite news |last=Moss |first=Charles |date=June 13, 2014 |title=At MAD Magazine, an Unlikely Rabbinic Figure |work=Tablet Magazine |url=https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/at-mad-magazine-an-unlikely-rabbinic-figure |access-date=March 23, 2023}}</ref>

Fellow ''Mad'' contributor [[Al Jaffee]] described Berg's unique personality in 2009: "Dave had a [[Messiah complex|messianic complex]] of some sort. He was battling ... he had good and evil inside of him, clashing all the time. It was sad, in a sense, because he wanted to be taken very seriously, and you know, the staffers at ''Mad'' just didn't take anything seriously. Most of all, ourselves ... It came out in a lot of the things he did. He had a very moralistic personality ... He wrote a book called ''My Friend God''. And of course, if you write a book like that, you just know that the ''Mad'' staff is going to make fun of you. We would ask him questions like, "Dave, when did you and God become such good friends? Did you go to college together, or what?"<ref>Sacks, Mike, ''And Here's the Kicker'', Writer's Digest Books, 2009, p. 223</ref>

In this faith connection, Berg was additionally hired to contribute content to The Magazine For Jewish Children, The Moshiach Times, by Rabbi Dr. Dovid Sholom Pape. According to Pape: "He was a wonderful writer and humorist, and he had a great Jewish heart. I asked him to prepare a series of cartoons that would, in a humorous way, illustrate basic ideas in Torah. To do this, he invented a fat character called Schlemiel who would always misunderstand things, and then there would be a couple of boys who would correct him."<ref>{{cite web
 | last = Pape
 | first = Dovid Shalom
 | title = How Drawing Pictures Can Influence People
 | website = TheRebbe.org
 | publisher = Chabad.org
 | url = http://www.chabad.org/therebbe/article_cdo/aid/2643159/jewish/How-Drawing-Pictures-Can-Influence-People.htm
 | access-date = October 13, 2015 }}</ref> In 2002, Berg told an interviewer, "There was a psychiatrist who filed my ''Lighter Sides'' in categories. When a patient would tell him their troubles, he would pull out one of my sequences and say, 'See, it happens to everyone.'"<ref>The Mad Panic, issue 70, July 2002, pg 8</ref>

His characters occasionally made their way into other artists' works, such as Kaputnik finding himself a patient in a [[Mort Drucker]] spoof of ''[[St. Elsewhere]]'', tagged "with apologies to Dave Berg".<ref>''Mad'' No. 281, September 1988.</ref>

Berg contributed to ''Mad'' for 46 years until his death, appearing in 368 issues.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://users.pfw.edu/slaubau/mad/madcontributor.htm|title=MAD Magazine Contributors}}</ref> His final hand-drawn strip appeared in Mad issue #423. His last set of "Lighter Side" strips, which had been written but not penciled, were illustrated after Berg's death by 18 of ''Mad'''s other artists as a final tribute; this affectionate send-off included the magazine's final new contributions from [[Jack Davis (cartoonist)|Jack Davis]] and [[George Woodbridge (illustrator)|George Woodbridge]]. This tribute appeared in Mad issue #427.

Between 2008 and 2017, Berg's old ''Lighter Side'' gags were given rewritten word balloons with inappropriately "un-Berg-like" humor by longtime ''Mad'' writer [[Dick DeBartolo]] and other staffers, while the art was unchanged. The twelve installments of this irregular feature were called "The Darker Side of the Lighter Side."

Berg's other work included the comic strips ''Citizen Senior'' (1989–93), ''Roger Kaputnik'' (1992) and ''Astronuts'' (1994).{{Citation needed|date=March 2023}}