Duck Edwing - The Duck Takes Wing

The Duck Takes Wing

A native of Brooklyn, Edwing began drawing at age nine. He started making the rounds with his cartoons after leaving the Navy in 1958, receiving $5 for his first sale in 1960. His tenure with Mad spans five decades, beginning with his first Mad article, an installment of the magazine's "Scenes We'd Like to See" series in Mad #70 (April 1962) and continuing at least through the 500th issue in 2009.

Before drawing his own cartoons, he was the uncredited writer for most of Don Martin's full-page sequences. During Don Martin's final years with Mad, Edwing began receiving a writer's byline for many of the gags in Martin's cartoons. After Martin's death in 2000, Edwing was asked about their working relationship:

Martin and I corresponded mostly with phone calls. The Mad editors did all the work by putting us together. I merely cheered Don up on a daily basis by telling him jokes, which had nothing to do with the work in front of him. I marveled at how he would take my chicken scratch sketches of a gag and transform them into a 2-D, animated, spectacular scene. The man was a major talent... l miss him.