Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead: The Writers and Artists Who Made the National Lampoon Insanely Great »

Rick Meyerowitz was a prolific contributor to the National Lampoon for 15 years, during which time he created the iconic Animal House movie poster. With Maira Kalman, he made the “New Yorkistan” cover of the New Yorker, the bestselling cover in that magazine’s history. He lives in New York City.

From its first issue in April, 1970, the National Lampoon blazed like a comet, defining comedy as we know it today. To create Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead, former Lampoon illustrator Rick Meyerowitz selected the funniest material from the magazine and sought out the survivors of its first electrifying decade to gather their most revealing and outrageous stories. The result is a mind-boggling tour through the early days of an institution whose alumni left their fingerprints all over popular culture: Animal House, Caddyshack, Saturday Night Live, Ghostbusters, SCTV, Spinal Tap, In Living Color, Ren & Stimpy, The Simpsons—even Sesame Street counts a few Lampooners among its ranks. Long before there was The Onion and Comedy Central news shows, there was the National Lampoon, setting the bar in comedy impossibly high!

The New York Times - Bill Scheft

…chronicles the magazine's history from its lurching beginnings in 1970…to its flinching end in the early '90s…All the names you should know get their due: unsung hero illustrators and satirists like Bruce McCall, Charles Rod rigues, Brian McConnachie (the funniest writer no one but other funny writers knows) and Gerry Sussman.