For more than three decades Don Martin was one of the "usual gang of idiots" who wrote and drew Mad Magazine. From 1956 to 1987 he played a key role in defining the magazine's style of "sick" humor and social satire. Martin had one of the most distinctive styles in all of comics. His knock-kneed, pot-bellied characters with peanut shaped heads, oversize feet, and absurdly prominent elbows were instantly recognizable. These characters, inhabiting a surreal and often violent slapstick universe, were victims of an endless variety of inventively disgusting fates. Hairdressers cheerfully filled the air in with snipped-off bits of ear and eyeball ("Don't tell any of my other customers I'm blind!"), while drunken surgeons removed entire skeletons.

Martin's clean and vigorous line drawings were influenced by illustrator Al Hirschfeld. His broad, visual humor derived from Vaudeville via his own warped sensibility. Martin also cited the grotesqueries of Hieronymous Bosch as an important influence. His style has in turn been strongly influential on, among others, the Northwest's own resident comics genius, Peter Bagge, creator of Buddy Bradley and Hate comics.

Because of disagreements with Mad Magazine publisher William Gaines, Martin defected in 1987 to Mad's mediocre rival Cracked. His dispute with Mad centered on the magazine's refusal to recognize the artist's ownership of his original artwork, or to share profits from reprints of his material. This coincided with artist Jack Kirby's similar problems with Marvel Comics, and led Martin to testify before a congressional subcommittee on the rights of freelance artists.

Don Martin died in January of 2000.

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