Editing Dave Berg (cartoonist)

{{Short description|American cartoonist (1920–2002)}}
{{Use mdy dates|date=February 2022}}
{{Infobox artist
| name          = Dave Berg
| image         = Davebergself.jpg
| image_size    = 250px
| caption       = Self-portrait
| birth_name    =
| birth_date    = {{birth date|1920|6|12|}}<ref>"United States Social Security Death Index," index, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.1.1/JTBK-FPG : accessed February 21, 2013), David Berg, May 17, 2002; citing U.S. Social Security Administration, Death Master File, database (Alexandria, Virginia: National Technical Information Service, ongoing).</ref>
| birth_place   = [[Brooklyn]], New York City
| death_date    = {{death date and age|2002|5|17|1920|6|12}}
| death_place   = [[Marina del Rey, California]], U.S.
| nationality   = American
| known_for     = [[Cartoonist]]
| training      =
| movement      =
| notable_works = ''[[The Lighter Side of...]]''
| patrons       =
| awards        =
| spouse        = Vivian (2 children)
}}
'''Dave Berg''' (June 12, 1920 in [[Brooklyn]] – May 17, 2002 in [[Marina del Rey, California]]) was an American [[cartoonist]], most noted for his five decades of work in ''[[Mad (magazine)|Mad]]'' of which ''[[The Lighter Side of...]]'' was the most famous.

==Early life==

Berg showed early artistic talents, attending [[Pratt Institute]] when he was 12 years old, and later studying at [[Cooper Union]]. He served a period of time in the [[United States Army Air Forces|Army Air Forces]]. In 1940, he joined [[Will Eisner]]'s studio, where he wrote and drew for the [[Quality Comics]] line. Berg's work also appeared in [[Dell Comics]] and [[Fawcett Publications]], typically on humorous back-up features. Beginning in the mid-1940s, he worked for several years with [[Stan Lee]] on comic books at [[Timely Comics]] (now known as [[Marvel Comics]]), ranging from ''[[Combat Kelly]]'' and ''The [[Ringo Kid]]'' to ''Tessie the Typist''. He also freelanced for a half-dozen other companies, including [[EC Comics]]. Berg retains notoriety as a contributing “[[good girl art]]ist” during the 50s and 60s for such publications as editor Abe Goodman's ''[[Humorama]],'' rendering attractive women using pinup stylings generally in the form of one-panel humorous gags. Berg's body of contributions during this period rank him alongside recognized contemporaries such as [[Bill Ward (cartoonist)|Bill Ward]] and [[Bill Wenzel]]. Beginning in 1983, he worked for a Jewish children's magazine, ''The Moshiach Times''.<ref name=reuters>[http://slick.org/deathwatch/mailarchive/msg00759.html Whitcomb, Dan. "Mad Magazine Cartoonist Dave Berg, 81, Dies in L.A.", Reuters. May 24, 2002.] {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120716192110/http://slick.org/deathwatch/mailarchive/msg00759.html |date=July 16, 2012 }}</ref><ref>[http://www.povonline.com/2002/News051602.htm Evanier, Mark. News from ME, May 17, 2002] {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120303014220/http://www.povonline.com/2002/News051602.htm |date=March 3, 2012 }}</ref>

==''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}}

==Death==
After a long battle with cancer, he died in his home in [[Marina del Rey, California]], shortly after midnight on May 17, 2002. Berg was survived by his wife of 52 years, Vivian, and their two children, Mitch and Nancy.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2002-may-24-me-berg24-story.html|title=Dave Berg, 81; Writer, Artist for Mad Magazine|website=[[Los Angeles Times]] |date=May 24, 2002}}</ref>

==Published works==
{| class="wikitable" style="background:#FFFFEE"
|+ Berg paperbacks
! style="background:#000000; color:white; width:40px"| Year
! style="background:#000000; color:white"| Title
! style="background:#000000; color:white"| ISBN
|-
! align="center"|1964
| ''Mad's Dave Berg Looks at the U.S.A.''
| {{ISBNT|978-0-446-35422-6}}
|- bgcolor="#ffffde"
! align="center"|1966
| ''Mad's Dave Berg Looks at People''
| {{ISBNT|978-0-446-86132-8}}
|-
! align="center"|1967
| ''Mad's Dave Berg Looks at Things''
| {{ISBNT|978-0-446-94403-8}}
|- bgcolor="#ffffde"
! align="center"|1969
| ''Mad's Dave Berg Looks at Modern Thinking''
| {{ISBNT|978-0-446-30434-4}}
|-
! align="center"|1971
| ''Mad's Dave Berg Looks at Our Sick World''
| {{ISBNT|978-0-446-94404-5}}
|- bgcolor="#ffffde"
! align="center"|1972
| ''Mad's Dave Berg: My Friend God''
| {{ISBNT|978-0-451-06976-4}}
|-
! align="center"|1973
| ''Mad's Dave Berg Looks at Living''
| {{ISBNT|978-0-446-75697-6}}
|- bgcolor="#ffffde"
! align="center"|1974
| ''Mad's Dave Berg: Roger Kaputnik and God''
| {{ISBNT|978-0-451-06106-5}}
|-
! align="center"|1975
| ''Mad's Dave Berg Looks Around''
| {{ISBNT|978-0-446-30432-0}}
|- bgcolor="#ffffde"
! align="center"|1977
| ''Dave Berg: Mad Trash''
| {{ISBNT|978-0-446-87938-5}}
|-
! align="center"|1977
| ''Mad's Dave Berg Takes a Loving Look''
| {{ISBNT|978-0-446-88860-8}}
|- bgcolor="#ffffde"
! align="center"|1979
| ''Mad's Dave Berg Looks, Listens and Laughs''
| {{ISBNT|978-0-446-88667-3}}
|-
! align="center"|1982
| ''Mad's Dave Berg Looks at You''
| {{ISBNT|978-0-446-34792-1}}
|- bgcolor="#ffffde"
! align="center"|1984
| ''Mad's Dave Berg Looks at the Neighborhood''
| {{ISBNT|978-0-446-30350-7}}
|-
! align="center"|1986
| ''Mad's Dave Berg Looks at Our Planet''
| {{ISBNT|978-0-446-32310-9}}
|- bgcolor="#ffffde"
! align="center"|1987
| ''Mad's Dave Berg Looks at Today''
| {{ISBNT|978-0-446-34423-4}}
|}
<!-- need a space-->

{| class="wikitable" style="background:#FFFFEE"
|+ Berg hardcovers
! style="background:#000000; color:white; width:40px"| Year
! style="background:#000000; color:white"| Title
! style="background:#000000; color:white"| ISBN
|-
! align="center" |2013
| ''Mad's Greatest Artists: Dave Berg: Five Decades of the Lighter Side Of...''
| {{ISBNT|9780762451616}}
|}

==References==
{{Reflist}}

== External links ==
* [http://www.toonsmag.com/2018/02/dave-berg.html Dave Berg] from [[Toons Mag]]
* [http://madcoversite.com/ugoi-dave_berg.html Complete list of Berg's articles for ''Mad'']
* [http://boingboing.net/kaputnik.html ''How Mad's Dave Berg and Roger Kaputnik Introduced Me to Post-Modernity'' by Terre Thaemlitz]
* [http://lambiek.net/artists/b/berg_david.htm Lambiek: Dave Berg]
*[https://osucartoons.pastperfectonline.com/vocabulary?keyword=Berg%2C+Dave%2C+1920-2002&letter=B&searchtype=creator&showsearch=true Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum Art Database]

{{Madcontribs}}
{{Mad magazine}}
{{eccontribs}}

{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Berg, Dave}}
[[Category:1920 births]]
[[Category:2002 deaths]]
[[Category:American satirical comics artists]]
[[Category:American satirical comics writers]]
[[Category:American humorists]]
[[Category:Jewish American comics writers]]
[[Category:Jewish American comics artists]]
[[Category:Jewish American humorists]]
[[Category:American satirists]]
[[Category:Deaths from cancer in California]]
[[Category:Cooper Union alumni]]
[[Category:Artists from Brooklyn]]
[[Category:Mad (magazine) cartoonists]]
[[Category:United States Army Air Forces soldiers]]
[[Category:People from Marina del Rey, California]]
[[Category:EC Comics]]
[[Category:United States Army Air Forces personnel of World War II]]