Will Elder

Who was Will Elder?

William Elder was an American illustrator and comic book artist who worked in numerous areas of commercial art but is best known for a zany cartoon style that helped launch Harvey Kurtzman's Mad comic book in 1952.

Elder's signature style, with extra humorous detail added upon humorous detail, is routinely described as "chicken fat," a reference to soup preparation. As Elder told an interviewer, "The term just came out of what we both [Kurtzman and Elder] knew were the parts of the strip that gave it more flavor but did very little to advance the storyline. That's what Chicken Fat does... it advances the flavor of the soup and, as we all know now, too much chicken fat will kill you!"

Elder's rampant insertion of background gags set the tone for the comic book, quickly spreading into the panels of his fellow artists and Mad's imitators. Kurtzman described their collaborative process: "I would write a story, and as if by magic, all the empty spaces would get filled in by sub-jokes... he was an inexhaustible source." Monty Python's Terry Gilliam said of Elder, "I don't know if anybody's really worked at that level as intensely as Willy did. And it never seemed to distract from the center." 21st-century Mad cartoonist Evan Dorkin put it more simply: "If God is in the details, Will Elder channeled God."