Mad #2 (Harvey Kurtzman) - Melvin Issue - 1952

Melvin Davis, Melvin Wood and Melvin Elder illustrated three of the stories in Mad No. 2.  The fourth story (Melvin!) was unsigned.  The artist (John Severin) was not known as Melvin until Mad No. 6 which featured the second Melvin of the Apes story.  Other Melvins in the issue were a sportscaster, baseball player, spaceman's assistant and criminal.

In Hex!, Jack Davis introduced three of the non sequiturs that would be seen in Mad for over forty years.  On the bottom left corner of the cover drawing is a nut, the kind that you would screw onto a machine bolt.  That by itself is not significant.  However, true Davis fans know that a similar nut can be found somewhere in almost every story ever drawn by him.  The second and third gifts from Davis are the crowd scenes which feature Dick Tracy and Alice the Goon.  One of the joys of reading Mad is finding celebrities and unusual characters in the audience, often during the second, third or nth reading.

The drawings and stories in Mad No. 2 were better than those in Mad No. 1.  Again, Elder's drawings were closer to the style that would define Mad. [PSA1]

Dick Tracy is in the crowd. ("Hex!" - page 2)

Departments:
Terror - Hex! (Davis)
Jungle - Melvin! (Severin)
Science-Fiction - Gookum! (Wood)
Crime - Mole! (Elder)