layouts laboriously on multiple sheets of tracing paper before passing them on to be finished by the artists. Most EC artists contributed to Mad at some time, but none more frequently than Jack Davis, Wally Wood, and especially Will Elder. While following Kurtzman's layouts strictly, Elder greatly expanded the art, inserting countless visual gags into the backgrounds. National, the owners of Superman's copyright, threatened to sue over the "Superduperman" parody. EC and National had the same lawyer, who advised Gaines to quit publishing parodies. While Gaines was weighing this advice, Kurtzman located a legal precedent that backed his and Mads right to publish parodies. Gaines hired the author of the precedent to write a brief substantiating EC's position, but the companies' shared lawyer disagreed, siding with National over EC. Gaines consulted a third lawyer, who advised Gaines to simply ignore the threat and continue publishing parodies. National never filed suit. The covers often imitated other publications. Basil Wolverton's parodied the glamour covers of Life magazine on the cover of Mad #11. That of #12 was in the all-text style of The Atlantic. #19 imitated a horse-racing form, and #21 was done in the manner of densely-packed advertisements for mail-order novelty products that often appeared in comic books. The 20th cover imitated a school composition notebook, and announced it was "designed to sneak into class". List of printings Original Revived Legacy Mads success immediately led to a slew of imitators form other publishers: Bughouse, Flip, Madhouse, Riot, Whack, Wild, and others. From December 1953 EC itself put out an imitator with the Feldstein-edited Panic. The irreverent style Kurtzman had pioneered in Mad had a strong influence on the underground comix of the 1960s and 1970s. List of issues Notes References Works cited Comics edited by Harvey Kurtzman EC Comics Mad (magazine)