"Duck" Edwing, a freelance gag cartoonist and writer whose work appeared in Mad Magazine for 49 years, passed away the day after Christmas. He was 82 years old.
Born in Brooklyn, NY, he started cartooning at the early age of nine. After a stint in the Navy, he drew up gag cartoons and started doing the NYC "cartoon look day" rounds in 1958. He was a prolific cartoonist, whose work appeared in the major markets; Playboy, The Saturday Evening Post and others. He began selling to Mad Magazine in 1962. He was known as a writer, primarily for Don Martin and the Spy vs. Spy feature.
"[Don] 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." -- Wikipedia
He met his wife, Clair "Cluck" Edwing in the 1970s. (Yes, "Cluck." "That's Right," writes Duck in his NCS bio page above.)
Duck Edwing had his own "Tales from the Duckside" feature, and he collaborated with Paul Coker, Jr. on two newspaper comic strips, Lancelot and Horace and Buggy. He helped write and draw Bob Thaves' Frank and Ernest strip. For Mad's 50th anniversary, Duck wrote a short-lived Spy vs. Spy newspaper feature for Tribune Media with Dave Manak handling the art. For Swedish readers, he created Super Sock and other successful European features. Duck Edwing also wrote and drew seventeen Mad paperbacks. Later in life, he turned his creative energies to slot machines, designing "plots to be used on the unsuspecting public!"
He moved to Florida. That's where Duck conceived of "The Golden Gator Award," an honor given to wives of cartoonists.
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