Albert B. Feldstein (born October 24, 1925) is an American writer, editor, and artist, best known for his work at EC Comics and, from 1956 to 1985, as the editor of the satirical magazine Mad. Since retiring from Mad, Feldstein has concentrated on American paintings of Western wildlife.

Al Feldstein was born 24 October 1925, in Brooklyn, New York, and grew up in Flatbush on East 31st Street between Avenue L and Avenue M. He attended P.S. 191, and when he was eight years old, he won a third-place medal in the annual John Wanamaker art competition. After winning an award in the 1939 New York World's Fair poster contest, he decided on a career in the art field and studied at the High School of Music and Art in upper Manhattan. When he was 15 years old, he was hired by Jerry Iger to work in the Eisner & Iger shop, an art service for the comic book industry. At Eisner & Iger, he earned three dollars a week running errands, inking balloon lines, ruling panel borders and erasing pages. When he began inking backgrounds, his salary jumped to five dollars a week.

Abraham Jaffee (born March 13, 1921), known as Al Jaffee, is an American cartoonist. He is notable for his work in the satirical magazine Mad, including his trademark feature, the Mad Fold-in. As of 2010, Jaffee remains a regular in the magazine after 55 years and is its longest-running contributor. Only one issue of Mad has been published since 1964 without containing new material by Jaffee. In a 2010 interview, Jaffee said, "Serious people my age are dead."

In 2008, Jaffee was honored by the Reuben Awards as the Cartoonist of the Year. New Yorker cartoonist Arnold Roth said, "Al Jaffee is one of the great cartoonists of our time." Describing Jaffee, Peanuts creator Charles Schulz wrote, "Al can cartoon anything."

Born in Savannah, Georgia, Jaffee spent six years of his childhood in Lithuania, returning to America in advance of the Nazi takeover. He studied at The High School of Music & Art in New York City in the late 1930s, along with future Mad personnel Will Elder, Harvey Kurtzman, John Severin and Al Feldstein.

Lyle Stuart (August 11, 1922 – June 24, 2006) was an American author and independent publisher of controversial books. Born Lionel Simon, Stuart worked as a newsman for years before launching his publishing firm, Lyle Stuart, Inc.

A former part owner of the original Aladdin Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas, he was a noted gambling authority, who advised casinos on how to protect themselves from cheats and cons. A garrulous raconteur, he had a wide circle of friends, freely admitting to a lively sex life and was fond of gambling, baccarat and craps, his games of choice. His gambling bestsellers are Casino Gambler for the Winner, Winning at Casino Gambling and Lyle Stuart on Baccarat. He boasted in Casino Gambler for the Winner that he'd won $166,505 in ten consecutive visits to Las Vegas.

He made headlines in 1997 with his then-current Barricade Books, by reissuing The Turner Diaries, a novel thought to have been the inspiration behind Timothy McVeigh's bombing of the Murrah building. He was a strong advocate of freedom of the press, and believed it was important for people to be able to read and make up their own minds (in the introduction he wrote to his reissue of The Turner Diaries, he made clear how strongly he opposed the viewpoint expressed in the book). Also in the 1990s, casino mogul Steve Wynn sued Stuart over catalog copy. The copy on Running Scared, a biography of Wynn, made reference to a New Scotland Yard report that tied the Las Vegas tycoon to the Genovese Crime Family. (The book refuted some of the report's findings.) Stuart lost the libel case and was ordered to pay three million dollars in defamation, forcing him into bankruptcy. This judgment was overturned on appeal by the Nevada Supreme Court in 2001 and sent back for a new trial, which Wynn chose not to pursue.

Harvey Kurtzman (October 3, 1924, Brooklyn, New York – February 21, 1993) was an American cartoonist and the editor of several comic books and magazines. Kurtzman often signed his name H. Kurtz, followed by a stick figure (i.e., H. Kurtz-man).

In 1952, he was the founding editor of the comic book Mad. Kurtzman was also known for the long-running Little Annie Fanny stories in Playboy (1962–88), satirizing the very attitudes that Playboy promoted.

Because Mad had a considerable effect on popular culture, Kurtzman was later described by The New York Times as having been "one of the most important figures in postwar America." Director and comedian Terry Gilliam said, “In many ways Harvey was one of the godparents of Monty Python.” Underground cartoonist Robert Crumb asserted that one of Kurtzman's cover images for Humbug "changed my life," and that another Mad cover image “changed the way I saw the world forever!” Writing for Time, Richard Corliss touted Kurtzman's influence:

He was inducted into the comic book industry's Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame in 1989.

Robert William "Bob" Hoskins, Jr. (born 26 October 1942) is an English actor known for playing Cockney rough diamonds, psychopaths and gangsters, in films such as The Long Good Friday (1980), and Mona Lisa (1986). He has since played lighter roles in family films, such as Eddie Valiant in Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988) and Smee in both Hook (1991) and Neverland (2011).

Hoskins was born in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, England, the son of Elsie Lillian (née Hopkins), a cook and nursery-school teacher, and Robert William Hoskins, Sr., a bookkeeper and lorry driver. One of Hoskins's grandmothers was a Romani of the British Romanis. From the age of two weeks old he was raised in Finsbury Park, in north London. His father, a Communist, brought up Hoskins as an atheist, and he now describes himself as an agnostic. In 1967, aged 25, Hoskins spent a short period of time in kibbutz Zikim in Israel. In a recent interview, when asked what he owed his parents, he said, "Confidence. My mum used to say to me, 'If somebody doesn't like you, fuck 'em, they've got bad taste.'"