Distinctive illustrator at MAD magazine who forged his own style

Jack Davis, an illustrator who poked fun at celebrities and politicians in MAD magazine for decades and whose work appeared on the covers of Time and TV Guide, died Wednesday in St. Simons Island, Ga. He was 91.

The cause was complications of a stroke, his son, Jack Davis III, said.

Mr. Davis was a prolific artist, drawing movie posters for films like “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad, World” and “The Long Goodbye,” as well as record album covers.

“There wasn’t anything Jack couldn’t do,” MAD’s editor, John Ficarra, said in a statement on the magazine’s website. “Front covers, caricatures, sports scenes, monsters — his comedic range was just incredible.”

He got his start in 1950 selling drawings to EC Comics, which published horror fiction titles like “Tales From the Crypt.” Two years later, amid an outcry over the potentially harmful effects of violent comics on children, the company started what became MAD magazine, edited by Harvey Kurtzman. Mr. Davis was a member of the “Usual Gang of Idiots,” the nickname for the crew that put out the magazine.

“There is not a humorous illustrator in the past 50 years who hasn’t been influenced by him,” the magazine’s current art director, Sam Viviano, said in its statement.

Jack Burton Davis Jr. was born in Atlanta on Dec. 2, 1924, the only child of Callie Davis, a schoolteacher, and Jack Davis, a salesman. After high school, he joined the U.S. Navy, serving in Guam, where he drew a comic called Boondocker for The Navy Times.

He returned to his home state and enrolled at the University of Georgia, where he drew for the student newspaper.

Before long, his teachers were encouraging him to go to New York to pursue his art career. He moved north and enrolled in classes at the Art Students League.

His early work was dark, craggy and high contrast, while most illustrators at the time used more realistic and flattering styles, said Chris Garvin, the director of the University of Georgia’s Lamar Dodd School of Art.

“He really looks like a painter in the way he uses a marker,” Mr. Garvin said. “That is something new for illustration at that time.”

His work softened later on. He became known for drawing all sorts of characters with oversized heads and feet, and skinny legs between.

He established himself as a versatile artist known for producing distinctive work quickly. He soon expanded into movie posters, advertising, album covers and other promotional materials.

“I remember going into New York and seeing big, three-story posters, and he’d say, ‘I did that!’ ” Mr. Davis’s son recalled. “There was a time when every single day, you could go to the supermarket or train station, and you could see his work. Those were the glory years.”

Mr. Davis and his wife, Dena, returned to Georgia from New York in the 1990s, settling on St. Simons Island in a house that their son, an architect, designed.

The National Cartoonists Society honored him with a lifetime achievement award in 1996, and he was inducted into the Society of Illustrators Hall of Fame in 2005.

In addition to his son and his wife, he is survived by a daughter, Katie Lloyd, and two grandchildren.