This very peculiar 2-pager ran at the back of some minor DC comic — for the life of me I can’t remember which one I scanned it from [EDIT: it was Secret Six #6] — at some point around 1969, or into the early-1970s. I’d never heard of Sam Viviano, but a quick web search just now reveals he is a well-known artist/caricaturist for Mad magazine, and currently art director for the mag. He’d only have been in his teens when this was done, so I can’t imagine it featured in Mad prior to its appearance here.
You’ll note the cavalier way original art was just given away back then. It wasn’t unusual for an editor to give away whole stories to fans who wrote letters to the company in the mid-60s. Note a guest appearance (probably) by Julie Schwartz in the background of the first panel of page 2. As for the “Marvin Wolfman” mentioned… no, I’ve no idea what became of him — or his scrapbook.
Anyway, it’s nice to know the boy done good eventually, and did indeed get to work for DC — what with Mad now being published by the erstwhile Detective Comics Inc.
Click on the pages for larger versions that may be slightly more legible.
©2009 DC Comics/Sam Viviano/the respective copyright holder
That’s AMAZING. I have to find out what comic that’s from!!
I will try and find it again — it just might take me a while!
After some detective work I found the comic I scanned this from: Secret Six #6 (March/April 1969). Apparently, it also appeared in a few other titles with that cover date (Captain Action #3, for example).
[...] Allan Harvey found a very amusing little two-pager in an old DC Comic about the joys of visiting the DC Comics offices. [...]