Books and Writings
Jacobs wrote 13 paperback books under the Mad imprint, including Mad for Better or Verse, a collection of poetry parodies, as well as the best-selling biography The Mad World of William M. Gaines.
One of Jacobs' non-Mad-related projects was 1965's Alvin Steadfast on Vernacular Island, a gentle spoof of post-Victorian boys' books. The titular hero is a ten-year-old boy, who joins an adult explorer on Vernacular Island, a place populated by bizarre and wonderful creatures such as the Standing Ovation, the Ill Omen, the Glowing Report and the Ugly Rumor. The two humans go in search of the Doubt, and as their adventure takes them into the jungle, even more fabulous creatures are encountered. The original Dial Press edition was illustrated by Edward Gorey, in a non-characteristic whimsical style unlike his usual gleefully dark drawings. Jacobs' writing is only lightly cynical, with more of an emphasis on wordplay, puns and gentle humor.
Jacobs contributed to other magazines, including Oui, Playboy, Town and Country, New York, Sports Illustrated, Saturday Review, Punch and Signature.
At the 2009 San Diego Comic-Con, Jacobs was a co-recipient of the Bill Finger Award for Excellence in Comic Book Writing.
Read more about this topic: Frank Jacobs
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“All ... forms of consensus about “great” books and “perennial” problems, once stabilized, tend to deteriorate eventually into something philistine. The real life of the mind is always at the frontiers of “what is already known.” Those great books don’t only need custodians and transmitters. To stay alive, they also need adversaries. The most interesting ideas are heresies.”
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“Even in my own writings I cannot always recover the meaning of my former ideas; I know not what I meant to say, and often get into a regular heat, correcting and putting a new sense into it, having lost the first and better one. I do nothing but come and go. My judgement does not always forge straight ahead; it strays and wanders.”
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