Kick Dondi in the Teeth Day

Today, as decreed by MAD magazine 60 years ago, is Kick Dondi in the Teeth Day.

Not sure what MAD had against wholesome, doe-eyed Dondi, and it’s certainly a violent image, but it was funny when I first came across it in MAD’s 1965 calendar, and it still is today.

During its first ten or so years, much of MAD’s parodies focused on newspaper comic strips, which for decades could have been considered the cable TV/streaming series of their time: long-term character continuity, serialized, with millions of viewers.

Our family got the New York Daily News with its Sunday comic section, and most of the strips were already feeling creaky by the mid-sixties: Little Orphan Annie (which began in 1924), Gasoline Alley (1918) and Terry and the Pirates (1934). Dondi (1955) was the newcomer.

I usually stuck to the mild humor of gag cartoons like Our Boarding House (1924), Bringing Up Father (1913), Smokey Stover (1935) and They’ll Do It Every Time (1929); reading them was like a glimpse into the past, the same feel as watching the occasional Model T driving down the main street of my hometown.

Originally, Dondi was a World War II orphan who wandered into the care of U.S soldiers and was brought to the U.S. The strip debuted on September 25, 1955.

David Kory

As he became more Americanized, Dondi’s European roots fell by the wayside. An awful Dondi movie (1961) was a high point for six-year-old non-actor David Kory and a low career ebb for stars David Janssen and Patti Page.

Dondi the newspaper comic strip's popularity waned. By the time the strip ended in 1986 it was only appearing in 35 newspapers (vs. some 200 at its height). Now that was a real kick in the teeth.