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WIKIMAG n. 7 - Giugno 2013
Mad magazine
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Mad is an American
humor
magazine founded by editor
Harvey Kurtzman and publisher
William Gaines in 1952. Launched as a comic book before it
became a magazine, it was widely imitated and influential, impacting
not only
satirical media but the entire cultural landscape of the 20th
century, with editor
Al Feldstein increasing readership to more than 2,000,000 during
its 1970s circulation peak.[1]
The last surviving title from the notorious and critically
acclaimed[2][3]
EC Comics line, the magazine offers satire on all aspects of
life and
popular culture, politics, entertainment, and public figures.
Its format is divided into a number of recurring segments such as TV
and movie
parodies, as well as freeform articles. Mad's mascot,
Alfred E. Neuman, is typically the focal point of the magazine's
cover, with his face often replacing a celebrity or character that
is lampooned within the issue.
In 2010, the magazine's oldest and longest-running contributor,
Al Jaffee, told an interviewer, "Mad was designed to
corrupt the minds of children. And from what I'm gathering from the
minds of people all over, we succeeded."[4]
History
Main article:
History of Mad
With issue 24 (July 1955), Mad switched to a
magazine format. The "extremely important message" was
"Please buy this magazine!"
Debuting in August 1952 (cover
date October–November), Mad began as a
comic book published by
EC, located in lower Manhattan at 225 Lafayette Street. In the
early 1960s, the Mad office moved to 485
Madison Avenue, a location given in the magazine as "485 MADison
Avenue". The title is trademarked in capitals as MAD.
Written almost entirely by
Harvey Kurtzman, the first issue featured illustrations by
Kurtzman himself, along with
Wally Wood,
Will Elder,
Jack Davis and
John Severin. Wood, Elder and Davis were the three main
illustrators throughout the 23-issue run of the comic book.
To retain Kurtzman as its editor, the comic book converted to
magazine format as of issue #24 (1955). The switchover only
induced Kurtzman to remain for one more year, but crucially, the
move had removed Mad from the strictures of the
Comics Code Authority. After Kurtzman's departure in 1956, new
editor Al Feldstein swiftly brought aboard contributors such as
Don Martin,
Frank Jacobs and
Mort Drucker, and later,
Antonio Prohías and
Dave Berg. The magazine's circulation more than quadrupled
during Feldstein's tenure, peaking at 2,132,655 in 1974; it later
declined to a third of this figure by the end of his time as editor.[5]
When Feldstein retired in 1984, he was replaced by the team of
Nick Meglin and
John Ficarra, who co-edited Mad for the next two decades.
Since Meglin's retirement in 2004, Ficarra has continued to edit the
magazine.
Gaines sold his company in the early 1960s to the
Kinney Parking Company, which also acquired
National Periodicals (aka
DC Comics) and
Warner Bros. by the end of that decade. Gaines was named a
Kinney board member, and was largely permitted to run Mad as
he saw fit without corporate interference.[6]
Following Gaines's death, Mad became more ingrained within
the
Time Warner corporate structure. Eventually, the magazine was
obliged to abandon its long-time home at 485 Madison Avenue, and in
the mid-1990s it moved into DC Comics' offices at the same time DC
relocated to 1700
Broadway. In 2001, the magazine broke its long-standing taboo
and began running paid advertising. The outside revenue allowed for
the introduction of color printing and improved paper stock.
In its earliest incarnation, new issues of the magazine appeared
erratically, between four and seven times a year. By the end of
1958, Mad had settled on an unusual eight-times-a-year
schedule,[7]
which lasted almost four decades.[8][9]
Gaines felt the atypical timing was necessary to maintain the
magazine's level of quality. Mad then began producing
additional issues, until it reached a traditional monthly schedule
with the January 1997 issue.[10][11]
With its 500th issue (June 2009), amid company-wide cutbacks at Time
Warner, the magazine temporarily regressed to a quarterly
publication[12]
before settling to six issues per year in 2010.[13]
Influence
Though there are antecedents to Mad’s style of humor in
print, radio and film, Mad became a pioneering example of it.
Throughout the 1950s, Mad featured groundbreaking parodies
combining a sentimental fondness for the familiar staples of
American culture—such as
Archie and
Superman—with a keen joy in exposing the fakery behind the
image. Its approach was described by
Dave Kehr in
The New York Times: "Bob
Elliott and
Ray Goulding on the radio,
Ernie Kovacs on television,
Stan Freberg on records,
Harvey Kurtzman in the early issues of Mad: all of those
pioneering humorists and many others realized that the real world
mattered less to people than the sea of sounds and images that the
ever more powerful mass media were pumping into American lives."[14]
Bob and Ray, Kovacs and Freberg all became contributors to
Mad.[15]
In 1977, Tony Hiss and Jeff Lewis wrote in The New York Times
about the then 25-year-old publication's initial effect:
The skeptical generation of kids it shaped in the 1950s is
the same generation that, in the 1960s, opposed a war and
didn't feel bad when the United States lost for the first
time and in the 1970s helped turn out an Administration and
didn't feel bad about that either... It was magical,
objective proof to kids that they weren't alone, that in New
York City on Lafayette Street, if nowhere else, there were
people who knew that there was something wrong, phony and
funny about a world of bomb shelters, brinkmanship and
toothpaste smiles. Mad's consciousness of itself, as
trash, as comic book, as enemy of parents and teachers, even
as money-making enterprise, thrilled kids. In 1955, such
consciousness was possibly nowhere else to be found. In a
Mad parody, comic-strip characters knew they were stuck
in a strip. For example, "Darnold Duck," a parody of
Donald Duck, begins wondering why he has only three
fingers and has to wear white gloves all the time. He ends
up wanting to murder every other Disney character. G.I.
Schmoe tries to win the sexy Asiatic broad by telling her,
"O.K., baby! You're all mine! I gave you a chance to hit me
witta gun butt... But naturally, you have immediately fallen
in love with me, since I am a big hero of this story." [16]
Mad is often credited with filling a vital gap in
political satire from the 1950s to 1970s, when
Cold War paranoia and a general culture of
censorship prevailed in the United States, especially in
literature for teens. Activist
Tom Hayden said, "My own radical journey began with Mad
Magazine."[17]
The rise of such factors as
cable television and the
Internet have diminished the influence and impact of Mad,
although it remains a widely distributed magazine. In a way, Mad's
power has been undone by its own success: what was subversive in the
1950s and 1960s is now commonplace. However, its impact on three
generations of humorists is incalculable, as can be seen in the
frequent references to Mad on the animated series
The Simpsons.[18]
Simpsons producer
Bill Oakley said, "The Simpsons has transplanted Mad
magazine. Basically everyone who was young between 1955 and 1975
read Mad, and that’s where your sense of humor came from. And
we knew all these people, you know, Dave Berg and Don Martin– all
heroes, and unfortunately, now all dead. And I think The Simpsons
has taken that spot in America’s heart."[19]
In 2009, The New York Times wrote, "Mad once defined
American satire; now it heckles from the margins as all of culture
competes for trickster status."[20]
Longtime contributor
Al Jaffee described the dilemma to an interviewer in 2010: "When
Mad first came out, in 1952, it was the only game in town.
Now, you've got graduates from Mad who are doing
The Today Show or
Stephen Colbert or
Saturday Night Live. All of these people grew up on Mad.
Now Mad has to top them. So Mad is almost in a
competition with itself."[4]
Mad's satiric net was cast wide. The magazine often
featured parodies of ongoing American culture, including advertising
campaigns, the nuclear family, the media, big business, education
and publishing. In the 1960s and beyond, it satirized such
burgeoning topics as the
sexual revolution,
hippies,
the
generation gap,
psychoanalysis,
gun politics,
pollution, the
Vietnam War and
recreational drug use. The magazine took a generally negative
tone towards counterculture drugs such as
cannabis and
LSD, but also savaged mainstream drugs such as
tobacco and
alcohol. Mad always satirized
Democrats as mercilessly as it did
Republicans.[21]
In 2007, Al Feldstein recalled, "We even used to rake the hippies
over the coals. They were protesting the Vietnam War, but we took
aspects of their culture and had fun with it. Mad was wide open.
Bill loved it, and he was a capitalist Republican. I loved it,
and I was a liberal Democrat. That went for the writers, too; they
all had their own political leanings, and everybody had a voice. But
the voices were mostly critical. It was social commentary, after
all."[22]
Mad also ran a good deal of less topical or contentious
material on such varied subjects as
fairy tales,
nursery rhymes,
greeting cards,
sports,
small talk,
poetry,
marriage,
comic strips,
awards shows,
cars and many other areas of general interest.[23][24]
In 2007, the
Los Angeles Times' Robert Boyd wrote, "All I really need to
know I learned from Mad magazine", going on to assert:
Plenty of it went right over my head, of course, but that's
part of what made it attractive and valuable. Things that go
over your head can make you raise your head a little higher.
The magazine instilled in me a habit of mind, a way of
thinking about a world rife with false fronts, small print,
deceptive ads, booby traps, treacherous language, double
standards, half truths, subliminal pitches and product
placements; it warned me that I was often merely the target
of people who claimed to be my friend; it prompted me to
mistrust authority, to read between the lines, to take
nothing at face value, to see patterns in the often shoddy
construction of movies and TV shows; and it got me to think
critically in a way that few actual humans charged with my
care ever bothered to. [25]
Actor
Michael Biehn autographing a copy of Mad #268
(January 1987) which parodies one of Biehn's films,
Aliens.
In 1994, Brian Siano in
The Humanist discussed the eye-opening aspects of Mad:
For the smarter kids of two generations, Mad was a
revelation: it was the first to tell us that the toys we
were being sold were garbage, our teachers were phonies, our
leaders were fools, our religious counselors were
hypocrites, and even our parents were lying to us about damn
near everything. An entire generation had William Gaines for
a godfather: this same generation later went on to give us
the sexual revolution, the environmental movement, the peace
movement, greater freedom in artistic expression, and a host
of other goodies. Coincidence? You be the judge." [26]
Pulitzer Prize–winning art comics maven
Art Spiegelman said, "The message Mad had in general is,
'The media is lying to you, and we are part of the media.' It was
basically... 'Think for yourselves, kids.'" William Gaines offered
his own view: when asked to cite Mad's philosophy, his
boisterous answer was, "We must never stop reminding the reader what
little value they get for their money!"
Comics historian
Tom Spurgeon picked Mad as the medium's top series of all
time, writing, "At the height of its influence, Mad was
The Simpsons,
The Daily Show and
The Onion combined."[27]
Graydon Carter chose it as the sixth best magazine of any sort
ever, describing Mad's mission as being "ever ready to pounce
on the illogical, hypocritical, self-serious and ludicrous" before
concluding, "Nowadays, it’s part of the oxygen we breathe."[28]
Joyce Carol Oates called it "wonderfully inventive, irresistibly
irreverent and intermittently ingenious American."[29]
Monty Python's
Terry Gilliam wrote, "Mad became the Bible for me and my
whole generation."[30]
Critic
Roger Ebert wrote:
I learned to be a movie critic by reading Mad
magazine... Mad's parodies made me aware of the
machine inside the skin—of the way a movie might look
original on the outside, while inside it was just recycling
the same old dumb formulas. I did not read the magazine, I
plundered it for clues to the universe.
Pauline Kael lost it at the movies; I lost it at Mad
magazine. [31]
Rock singer
Patti Smith said more succinctly, "After Mad, drugs were
nothing."[32]
Court cases
The magazine has been involved in various legal actions over the
decades, some of which have reached the
United States Supreme Court. The most far-reaching was
Irving Berlin et al. v. E.C. Publications, Inc. In 1961, a
group of music publishers representing songwriters such as
Irving Berlin,
Richard Rodgers and
Cole Porter filed a $25 million lawsuit against Mad for
copyright infringement following "Sing Along With Mad," a
collection of parody lyrics which the magazine said could be "sung
to the tune of" many popular songs. The publishing group hoped to
establish a legal precedent that only a song's composers retained
the right to parody that song. The U.S. District Court ruled largely
in favor of Mad in 1963, affirming its right to print 23 of
the 25 song parodies under dispute. Circuit Court Judge Charles
Metzner pointedly observed, "We doubt that even so eminent a
composer as plaintiff Irving Berlin should be permitted to claim a
property interest in
iambic pentameter."[33]
However, an exception was found in the cases of two parodies,
"Always" (sung to the tune of "Always") and "There's No Business
Like No Business" (sung to the tune of "There's No Business Like
Show Business"). Relying on the same verbal hooks ("always" and
"business"), these were found to be overly similar to the originals.
The music publishers appealed the ruling, but the U.S. Court of
Appeals not only upheld the pro-Mad decision in regard to the
23 songs, it stripped the publishers of their limited victory
regarding the remaining two songs. The publishers again appealed,
but the Supreme Court refused to hear it, thus allowing the decision
to stand.[34][35]
This precedent-setting case established the rights of parodists
and satirists to mimic the meter of popular songs. However, the
"Sing Along With Mad" songbook was not the magazine's first
venture into musical parody. In 1960, Mad had published "My
Fair Ad-Man," a full advertising-based spoof of the hit Broadway
musical
My Fair Lady. In 1959, "If
Gilbert & Sullivan wrote
Dick Tracy" was one of the speculative pairings in "If
Famous Authors Wrote the Comics". Three decades later, Mad
was one of several parties that filed
amicus curiae briefs with the Supreme Court in support of
2 Live Crew and its disputed song parody, during the 1993
Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc. case.[36]
In 1966, a series of copyright infringement lawsuits against the
magazine regarding ownership of the
Alfred E. Neuman image eventually reached the Supreme Court. New
York's Federal Appellate Court had invalidated all previous
copyrights, thus establishing Mad's right to the character.
This decision was also allowed to stand.[24]
Advertising
Mad was long noted for its absence of
advertising, enabling it to satirize materialist culture without
fear of reprisal. For decades, it was the most successful American
magazine to publish ad-free,[37]
beginning with issue #33 (April 1957) and continuing through issue
#402 (February 2001).
As a comic book, Mad had run the same advertisements as
the rest of EC's line. The magazine later made a deal with
Moxie
soda that involved inserting the Moxie logo into various articles.
Mad ran a limited number of ads in its first two years as a
magazine, helpfully labeled "real advertisement" to differentiate
the real from the parodies. The last authentic ad published under
the original Mad regime was for
Famous Artists School; two issues later, the inside front cover
of issue #34 had a parody of the same ad. After this transitional
period, the only promotions to appear in Mad for decades were
house ads for Mad's own books and specials, subscriptions,
and promotional items such as ceramic busts, T-shirts, or a line of
Mad jewelry. This rule was bent only a few times to promote
outside products directly related to the magazine, such as
Parker Brothers Mad Board Game, the video game based on
Spy vs. Spy, and the notorious
Up the Academy movie, (which the magazine later disowned).
Mad explicitly promised that it would never make its mailing
list available.
Both Kurtzman and Feldstein wanted the magazine to solicit
advertising, feeling this could be accomplished without compromising
Mad's content or editorial independence. Kurtzman remembered
Ballyhoo, a boisterous 1930s humor publication that made an
editorial point of mocking its own sponsors. Feldstein went so far
as to propose an in-house Mad ad agency, and produced a
"dummy" copy of what an issue with ads could look like. But Bill
Gaines was intractable, telling the television news magazine
60 Minutes, "We long ago decided we couldn't take money from
Pepsi-Cola and make fun of Coca-Cola." Gaines' motivation in
eschewing ad dollars was less philosophical than practical:
We'd have to improve our package. Most advertisers want to
appear in a magazine that's loaded with color and has
super-slick paper. So you find yourself being pushed into
producing a more expensive package. You get bigger and
fancier and attract more advertisers. Then you find you're
losing some of your advertisers. Your readers still expect
the fancy package, so you keep putting it out, but now you
don't have your advertising income, which is why you got
fancier in the first place—and now you're sunk. [38]
Recurring
features
Mad is known for many regular and semi-regular recurring
features in its pages, including "Spy
vs. Spy", the "Mad
Fold-in", "The Lighter Side of..." and its television and movie
parodies.
Alfred E. Neuman
First cover appearance (issue 21, March 1955) of Alfred
E. Neuman in a fake advertisement satirizing the popular
mail-order house
Johnson Smith Company.
The image most closely associated with the magazine is that of
Alfred E. Neuman, the boy with misaligned eyes, a gap-toothed
smile and the perennial motto "What,
me worry?" While the original image was a popular humorous
graphic for many decades before Mad adopted it, the face is
now primarily associated with Mad.
Mad first used the boy's face in November, 1954. His first
iconic full-cover appearance, in which he was identified by name and
sported his "What, me worry?" motto, was as a write-in candidate for
President on issue #30 (December 1956). He has since appeared in a
slew of guises and comic situations. According to Mad writer
Frank Jacobs, a letter was once successfully delivered to the
magazine through the
U.S. mail bearing only Neuman's face, without any address or
other identifying information.[38]
Contributors and controversy
Mad has provided an ongoing showcase for many long-running
satirical writers and artists and has fostered an unusual group
loyalty. Although several of the contributors earn far more than
their Mad pay in fields such as television and advertising,
they have steadily continued to provide material for the
publication.[39]
Among the notable artists were the aforementioned Davis, Elder and
Wood, as well as
Mort Drucker,
George Woodbridge and
Paul Coker. Writers such as
Dick DeBartolo,
Stan Hart,
Frank Jacobs,
Tom
Koch, and
Arnie Kogen appeared regularly in the magazine's pages. In
several cases, only infirmity or death has ended a contributor's run
at Mad.
Within the industry, Mad was known for the uncommonly
prompt manner in which its contributors were paid. Publisher Gaines
would typically write a personal check and give it to the artist
upon receipt of the finished product. Wally Wood said, "I got
spoiled... Other publishers don't do that. I started to get upset if
I had to wait a whole week for my check." Another lure for
contributors was the annual "Mad Trip," an all-expenses-paid
tradition that began in 1960. The editorial staff was automatically
invited, along with freelancers who had qualified for an invitation
by selling a set amount of articles or pages during the previous
year. Gaines was strict about enforcing this quota, and one year,
longtime writer and frequent traveller Arnie Kogen was bumped off
the list. Later that year, Gaines' mother died, and Kogen was asked
if he would be attending the funeral. "I can't," said Kogen, "I
don't have enough pages." Over the years, the Mad crew
traveled to such locales as France,
Kenya,
Russia, Hong Kong, England,
Amsterdam,
Tahiti,
Morocco, Italy, Greece, and Germany.[34]
The tradition ended with Gaines' death, and a 1993 trip to
Monte Carlo.
Although Mad was an exclusively freelance publication, it
achieved a remarkable stability, with numerous contributors
remaining prominent for decades.[40]
Critics of the magazine felt that this lack of turnover eventually
led to a formulaic sameness, although there is little agreement on
when the magazine peaked or plunged. Many have written that the key
factor is when the reader first encountered Mad.
Proclaiming the precise moment that began the magazine's
irreversible decline has long been sport. Mad poked fun at
the tendency of readers to accuse the magazine of declining in
quality at various points in its history, depending on the age of
the critic, in its "Untold History of Mad Magazine," a
self-referential faux history in the 400th issue which joked: "The
second issue of Mad goes on sale on December 9, 1952. On
December 11, the first-ever letter complaining that Mad 'just
isn't as funny and original like it used to be' arrives."
Among the most frequently cited "downward turning points" are:
creator/editor Harvey Kurtzman's departure in 1957;[41]
the magazine's mainstream success;[42]
adoption of recurring features starting in the early 1960s;[43]
the magazine's absorption into a more corporate structure in 1968
(or the mid-1990s);[44]
founder Gaines' death in 1992;[44]
the magazine's publicized "revamp" in 1997[citation
needed]; or the arrival of paid advertising in
2001.[45]
Mad has been criticized[citation
needed] for its over-reliance on a core group
of aging regulars throughout the 1970s and 1980s and then criticized
again[citation
needed] for an alleged downturn as those same
creators began to leave, die, retire or contribute less frequently.
It has been proposed that Mad is more susceptible to this
criticism than many media because a sizable percentage of its
readership turns over regularly as it ages, as Mad focuses
greatly on current events and a changing popular culture.[34]
In 2010,
Sergio Aragones said, "Mad is written by people who never
thought 'Okay, I’m going to write for kids,' or 'I’m going to write
for adults.' ... And many people say 'I used to read Mad, but
Mad has changed a lot.' Excuse me—you grew up! You have new
interests. ... The change doesn't come from the magazine, it comes
from the people who grow or don't grow."[46]
The magazine's art director,
Sam Viviano, has suggested that historically, Mad was at its
best "whenever you first started reading it."[47]
Among the loudest of those who insist the magazine is no longer
funny are supporters of
Harvey Kurtzman, who had the good critical fortune to leave
Mad after just 28 issues, before his own formulaic tendencies
might have become obtrusive. This also meant Kurtzman suffered the
bad creative and financial timing of departing before the magazine
became a runaway success.[41]
However, just how much of that success was due to the original
Kurtzman template that he left for his successor, and how much
should be credited to the
Al Feldstein system and the depth of the post-Kurtzman talent
pool, can be argued without resolution. In 2009, an interviewer
proposed to
Al Jaffee, "There's a group of Mad afficionados who feel
that if Harvey Kurtzman had stayed at Mad, the magazine would
not only have been different, but better." Jaffee, a Kurtzman
enthusiast, replied, "And then there's a large group who feel that
if Harvey had stayed with Mad, he would have upgraded it to
the point that only fifteen people would buy it."[48]
During Kurtzman's final two-plus years at EC, Mad appeared
erratically (ten issues appeared in 1954, followed by eight issues
in 1955 and four issues in 1956). Feldstein was less well regarded
creatively, but kept the magazine on a regular schedule, leading to
decades of success. (Kurtzman and
Will Elder returned to Mad for a short time in the
mid-1980s as an illustrating team.)
Many of the magazine's mainstays began retiring or dying by the
1980s. Newer contributors who appeared in the years that followed
include
Anthony Barbieri, Scott Bricher,
Tom
Bunk,
John Caldwell,
Desmond Devlin,
Drew Friedman,
Barry Liebmann,
Kevin Pope, Scott Maiko,
Hermann Mejia,
Tom Richmond, Andrew J. Schwartzberg,
Mike Snider,
Greg Theakston,
Nadina Simon,
Rick Tulka and
Bill Wray.
On April 1, 1997, the magazine publicized an alleged "revamp,"
ostensibly designed to reach an older, more sophisticated
readership. However,
Salon's David Futrelle opined that such content was very much a
part of Mad's past:
The October 1971 issue, for example, with its war crimes
fold-in and back cover "mini-poster" of "The Four Horsemen
of the Metropolis" (Drugs, Graft, Pollution and Slums). With
its Mad Pollution Primer. With its "Reality Street" TV
satire, taking a poke at the idealized images of interracial
harmony on
Sesame Street. ("It's a street of depression,/
Corruption, oppression!/ It's a sadist's dream come true!/
And masochists, too!") With its "This is America" photo
feature, contrasting images of heroic astronauts with
graphic photos of dead soldiers and junkies shooting up. I
remember this issue pretty well; it was one of the ones I
picked up at a garage sale and read to death. I seem to
remember asking my parents what "graft" was. One of the joys
of Mad for me at the time was that it was always
slightly over my head. From "Mad's Up-Dated Modern Day
Mother Goose" I learned about
Andy Warhol,
Spiro Agnew and
Timothy Leary ("Wee Timmy Leary/ Soars through the sky/
Upward and Upward/ Till he's, oh, so, high/ Since this
rhyme's for kiddies/ How do we explain/ That Wee Timmy
Leary/ Isn't in a plane?"). From "Greeting Cards for the
Sexual Revolution" I learned about "Gay Liberationists" and
leather-clad "Sex Fetishists." I read the Mad
versions of a whole host of films I never in a million years
would have been allowed to see:
Easy Rider ("Sleazy Riders"),
Midnight Cowboy ("Midnight Wowboy"),
Five Easy Pieces ("Five Easy Pages [and two hard
ones].") I learned about the
John Birch Society and
Madison Avenue. [49]
Mad editor
John Ficarra acknowledges that changes in culture have made the
task of creating fresh satire more difficult, telling an
interviewer, “The editorial mission statement has always been the
same: 'Everyone is lying to you, including magazines. Think for
yourself. Question authority. But it’s gotten harder, as they’ve
gotten better at lying and getting in on the joke.”[50]
Mad contributor
Tom Richmond has tweaked critics who say the magazine's decision
to accept advertising would make late publisher
William Gaines "turn over in his grave", pointing out this was
impossible because Gaines was cremated.[51]
Contributors
Mad is known for the stability and longevity of its talent
roster, billed as "The Usual Gang of Idiots," with several creators
enjoying 30-, 40- and even 50-year careers in the magazine's pages.
According to the "Mad Magazine Contributor Appearances" website,
nearly 800 contributors have received bylines in at least one issue
of Mad, but only three dozen of those have contributed to 100
issues or more.[52]
Al Jaffee has appeared in the most issues (471 as of June 2013).
The other three contributors to have appeared in more than 400
issues of Mad are
Sergio Aragonés,
Dick DeBartolo, and
Mort Drucker;
Dave Berg,
Paul Coker and
Frank Jacobs have each topped the 300 mark. (The list calculates
appearances by issue only, not by individual articles or overall
page count; e.g. although Jacobs wrote three separate articles that
appeared in issue #172, his total is reckoned to have increased by
one.)
Each of the following contributors has created over 150 articles
for the magazine:
Photographer:
Some of the editorial staff, notably Charlie Kadau,
John Ficarra, and
Joe Raiola, have had dozens of bylined articles. They, along
with
Al Feldstein,
Nick Meglin and others, also had creative input with many
articles.
Other
notable contributors
Among the irregular contributors with just a single Mad
byline to their credit are
Charles M. Schulz,
Chevy Chase,
"Weird Al" Yankovic,
Andy Griffith,
Will Eisner,
Kevin Smith,
J. Fred Muggs,
Boris Vallejo,
Sir John Tenniel,
Jean Shepherd,
Winona Ryder,
Jimmy Kimmel,
Jason Alexander,
Walt Kelly, Rep.
Barney Frank,
Tom Wolfe,
Steve Allen,
Jim
Lee,
Jules Feiffer,
Donald Knuth and
Richard Nixon, who remains the only President credited with
"writing" a Mad article.[52]
Contributing just twice are such luminaries as
Tom Lehrer,
Gustave Doré,
Danny Kaye,
Stan Freberg,
Mort Walker and
Leonardo da Vinci. (Mr. da Vinci's check is still waiting in the
Mad offices for him to pick it up.)
Frank Frazetta (3 bylines),
Ernie Kovacs (11),
Bob and Ray (12), and
Sid Caesar (4) appeared slightly more frequently. In its
earliest years, before amassing its own staff of regulars, the
magazine frequently used outside "name" talent. Often, Mad
would simply illustrate the celebrities' preexisting material.
The magazine has occasionally run guest articles in which
notables from show business or comic books have participated. In
1964, an article called "Comic Strips They'd Really Like To Do"
featured one-shot proposals by cartoonists including
Mell Lazarus and Charles M. Schulz. More than once, the magazine
has enlisted popular
comic book artists such as
Frank Miller or
Jim
Lee to design and illustrate a series of "Rejected Superheroes."
In 2008, the magazine got national coverage[53]
for its article "Why
George W. Bush is in Favor of
Global Warming." Each of the piece's ten punchlines was
illustrated by a different
Pulitzer Prize–winning editorial cartoonist.
Reprints and foreign editions
In 1955, Gaines began presenting reprints of material for Mad
in black-and-white paperbacks, the first being The Mad Reader.[54]
Many of these featured new covers by Mad cover artist Norman
Mingo. This practice continued into the 2000s, with more than 100
Mad paperbacks published. Gaines made a special effort to keep
the entire line of paperbacks in print at all times, and the books
were frequently reprinted in new editions with different covers.
Mad also frequently repackaged its material in a long
series of "Super Special" format magazines, beginning in 1958 with
two concurrent annual series entitled The Worst from Mad and
More Trash from Mad. Various other titles have been used
through the years.[55]
These reprint issues were sometimes augmented by exclusive features
such as posters, stickers and, on a few occasions, recordings on
flexi-disc, or comic book–formatted inserts reprinting material
from the 1952–55 era.
One steady form of revenue has come from foreign editions of the
magazine. Mad has been published in local versions in many
countries, beginning with the United Kingdom in 1959, and Sweden in
1960. Each new market receives access to the publication's back
catalog of articles and is also encouraged to produce its own
localized material in the Mad vein. However, the sensibility
of the American Mad has not always translated to other
cultures, and many of the foreign editions have had short lives or
interrupted publications. The Swedish, Danish, Italian and Mexican
Mads were each published on three separate occasions; Norway
has had four runs cancelled. United Kingdom (35 years), Sweden (34
years) and Brazil (33 years) produced the longest uninterrupted
Mad variants.
Current
foreign editions
- Germany, 1968–1995, 1998–present;
-
Brazil, 1974–1983, 1984–2000, 2000–2006,
2008–present;
- Australia, 1980–present;
|
- South Africa, 1985–present;
- Spain, 2006–present;
- Netherlands, 1964–1996; 2011–present;
|
Past
foreign editions
- United Kingdom, 1959–1994
- Sweden, 1960–1993, 1997–2002;
- Hungary, 1994–2009;[56]
- Denmark, 1962–1971, 1979–1997, 1998–2002;
- France, 1965, 1982;
- Canada (Quebec), 1991–1992 (Past material in a
"collection album" with Croc, another Quebec
humor magazine);
- Argentina, 1977–1982;
- Norway, 1971–1972, 1981–1993, 1995, 2002–2003;
|
- Finland, 1970–1972, 1982–2005
- Italy, 1971, 1984, 1992;
- Mexico, 1977–1983, 1984–1986, 1993–1998; 2004–2010[57]
- Caribbean, 1977–1983;
- Greece, 1978–1985, 1995–1999;
- Iceland, 1985; 1987–1988
- Taiwan, 1990;
- Israel, 1994–1995;
- Turkey, 2000–2003.
|
Conflicts over content have occasionally arisen between the
parent magazine and its international franchisees. When a comic
strip satirizing
England's royal family was reprinted in a Mad paperback,
it was deemed necessary to rip out the page from 25,000 copies by
hand before the book could be distributed in Great Britain.[58]
But Mad was also protective of its own editorial standards.
Bill Gaines sent "one of his typically dreadful, blistering letters"
to his Dutch editors after they published a bawdy gag about a men's
room urinal.[59]
Mad has since relaxed its requirements, and while the U.S.
version still eschews overt profanity, the magazine generally poses
no objections to more provocative content such as the Swedish
edition's 1999 parody of the film
Fucking Åmål.[60]
Mad Kids
Between 2006 and 2009, the magazine published 14 issues of Mad
Kids, a spinoff publication aimed at a younger demographic.
Reminiscent of
Nickelodeon's newsstand titles, it emphasized current kids'
entertainment (i.e.
Yu-Gi-Oh!,
Naruto,
High School Musical), albeit with an impudent voice. Much of
the content of Mad Kids had originally appeared in the parent
publication; reprinted material was chosen and edited to reflect
grade schoolers' interests. But the quarterly magazine also included
newly commissioned articles and cartoons, as well as puzzles, bonus
inserts, a calendar, and the other activity-related content that is
common to kids' magazines.[61]
Imitators
and variants
Mad has had many imitators through the years. The three
longest-lasting of these were
Cracked,
Sick, and
Crazy Magazine. However, most were short-lived. Some of the
early comic book competitors were Nuts!, Get Lost,
Whack, Riot, Flip, Eh!, From Here to
Insanity, and Madhouse; only the last of these lasted as
many as eight issues, and some were canceled after an issue or two.[62]
Many of these titles appeared in the mid-to-late 1950s, but as the
decades went by, more imitators surfaced and vanished, with titles
such as Wild, Blast, Parody, Grin and
Gag![63]
Most of these productions aped the format of Mad right
down to choosing a synonym for the word Mad as their title.
Many featured a cover mascot along the lines of
Alfred E. Neuman. Even EC Comics joined the parade with a sister
humor comic,
Panic, produced by future Mad editor Al Feldstein.
Two years after EC's Panic had ceased publication in 1956,
the title was used by another publisher, producing yet another
Mad imitation.
In 1967,
Marvel Comics produced the first of 13 issues of
Not Brand Echh, which parodied their own superhero titles as
well as DC's; the series owed its inspiration and format to the
original "Mad" comic books of a decade earlier. From 1973 to 1976,
DC Comics published
Plop!
which featured Mad stalwart
Sergio Aragonés and frequent cover art by
Basil Wolverton, but was less slavish in its Mad mimicry,
relying more on one-page gags and horror-based comedy.
Other U.S. humor magazines of note include former Mad
editor Harvey Kurtzman's
Humbug,
Trump and
Help!, as well as the
National Lampoon,
Spy, and
The Onion. However, these titles had their own distinct
editorial approach, and did not directly imitate Mad. Of all
the competition, only the National Lampoon ever threatened
Mad 's hegemony as America's top humor magazine, in the
early-to-mid-1970s. However, this was also the period of Mad's
greatest sales figures. Both magazines peaked in sales at the same
time. The Lampoon topped one million sales once, for a single
issue in 1974. Mad crossed the two-million mark with an
average 1973 circulation of 2,059,236, then improved to 2,132,655 in
1974.[5]
Gaines reportedly kept in his office a voodoo doll into which he
would stick pins labeled with each imitation of his magazine,
removing a pin only when the copycat had ceased publishing. At the
time of Gaines' death in 1992, only the pin for Cracked
remained.[38]
Other media
Over the years, Mad has branched out from print into other
media. During the Gaines years, the publisher had an aversion to
exploiting his fanbase and expressed the fear that substandard
Mad products would offend them. He was known to personally issue
refunds to anyone who wrote to the magazine with a complaint. Among
the few outside Mad items available in its first 40 years
were cufflinks, a T-shirt designed like a straitjacket (complete
with lock), and a small ceramic Alfred E. Neuman bust. For decades,
the letters page advertised an inexpensive portrait of Neuman
("suitable for framing or for wrapping fish") with misleading
slogans such as "Only 1 Left!" (The joke being that the picture was
so undesirable that only one had left their office since the last
ad.) After Gaines' death came an overt absorption into the
Time-Warner publishing umbrella, with the result that Mad
merchandise began to appear more frequently. Items were displayed in
the Warner Bros. Studio Stores, and in 1994 The Mad Style Guide
was created for licensing use.
Recordings
Mad has sponsored or inspired a number of recordings. In
1959, Bernie Green "with the Stereo Mad-Men" recorded the album
Musically Mad for
RCA Victor, featuring music inspired by Mad and an image
of Alfred E. Neuman on the cover;[64]
it has been reissued on CD. That same year, The Worst from Mad
#2 included an original recording, "Meet the Staff of Mad," on a
cardboard 33 rpm record, while a single credited to Alfred E. Neuman
& The Furshlugginger Five: "What - Me Worry?" (b/w "Potrzebie"), was
issued in late 1959 on the ABC Paramount label. Two additional
albums of novelty songs were released by Big Top Records in 1962–63:
"Mad 'Twists' Rock 'N' Roll" and "Fink Along with Mad." The latter
album featured a song titled "It's a Gas," which punctuated an
instrumental track with
belches (along with a saxophone break by an uncredited
King Curtis).
Dr. Demento featured this gaseous performance on his radio show
in Los Angeles in the early 1970s. Mad included some of these
tracks as plastic-laminated cardboard inserts and (later)
flexi-discs with their reprinted "Mad Specials." A number of
original recordings also were released in this way in the 1970s and
early 1980s, such as "Gall in the Family Fare" (a parody of
All in the Family), a single entitled "Makin' Out," the
octuple-grooved track "It's a Super Spectacular Day," which had
eight possible endings, the spoken word Meet the Staff
insert, and a six-track, 30-minute Mad Disco EP (from the
1980 Special of the same title) that included a
disco
version of "It's a Gas." The last turntable-playable recording
Mad packaged with its magazines was "A Mad Look at Graduation,"
in a 1983 Special. A CD-ROM containing several audio tracks was
included with issue #350 (October 1996).
Rhino Records compiled a number of Mad-recorded tracks as
Mad Grooves (1996).[65]
Stage show
A successful
off Broadway production,
The Mad Show, was first staged in 1966. The show, which
lasted for 871 performances during its initial run, featured
sketches written by Mad regulars Stan Hart and Larry Siegel
interspersed with comedic songs (one of which was written by an
uncredited
Stephen Sondheim).[24]
The cast album is available on CD.
Gaming
In 1979, Mad released a
board game.
The Mad Magazine Game was an absurdist version of
Monopoly in which the first player to lose all his money and go
bankrupt was the winner. Profusely illustrated with artwork by the
magazine's contributors, the game included a $1,329,063-bill that
could not be won unless one's name was "Alfred E. Neuman." It also
featured a deck of cards (called "Card cards") with bizarre
instructions, such as "If you can jump up and stay airborne for 37
seconds, you can lose $5,000. If not, jump up and lose $500." In
1980 a second game was released:
The Mad Magazine Card Game by
Parker Brothers. In it, the player who first
loses all their cards is declared the winner. The game is fairly
similar to
UNO by
Mattel.
Film and
television
Following the success of the National Lampoon–backed
Animal House, Mad lent its name in 1980 to a
similarly risque comedy film,
Up the Academy. It was such a commercial debacle and
critical failure that Mad successfully arranged for all
references to the magazine (including a cameo by Alfred E. Neuman)
to be removed from future TV and video releases of the film,
although those references were eventually restored on the DVD
version. Mad also devoted two pages to an attack on the
movie, titled Throw Up the Academy. The spoof's ending
collapsed into a series of interoffice memos between the writer,
artist, editor and publisher, all bewailing the fact that they'd
been forced to satirize such a terrible film.
A 1974 Mad animated television pilot using selected
material from the magazine was commissioned by
ABC but the network decided to not broadcast it. Dick DeBartolo
noted, "Nobody wanted to sponsor a show that made fun of products
that were advertised on TV, like car manufacturers." The program
instead was
syndicated as a special.[66]
In the mid-1980s,
Hanna-Barbera developed another potential Mad animated
television series which was never broadcast.[67]
Beginning in 1995,
Fox Broadcasting Company's
MADtv
licensed the use of the magazine's logo and characters. However,
aside from short bumpers which animated existing "Spy vs. Spy" and
Don Martin cartoons during the show's early years, there was no
editorial or stylistic connection between the TV show and the
magazine. Produced by
Quincy Jones, the sketch comedy series was in the vein of
Saturday Night Live and
SCTV, and ran for 14 seasons. Animated "Spy vs. Spy"
sequences have also been seen in TV ads for
Mountain Dew soda.[23]
In September 2010,
Cartoon Network began airing
an animated Mad from
Warner Bros. Animation and executive producer Sam Register (Teen
Titans,
Ben 10,
Batman: The Brave and the Bold). The series features short
animated vignettes about current television shows, films, games and
other aspects of popular culture. Much like MADtv's early years,
this series also features appearances by "Spy vs. Spy" and Don
Martin cartoons. Producing are
Kevin Shinick (Robot
Chicken) and Mark Marek (KaBlam!,
The Andy Milonakis Show).[68]
Computer
software
In the 1980s, three
Spy vs. Spy computer games, in which players could set traps for
each other, were made for various computer systems such as the
Commodore 64. While the original game took place in a
nondescript building, the sequels transposed the action to a polar
setting and a desert island.
Not to be confused with the later television show,
Mad TV is a television station management simulation computer
game produced in 1991[1] by Rainbow Arts for the Mad franchise. It
was released on the PC and the Amiga. It is faithful to the
magazine's general style of cartoon humor, but does not include any
of the original characters except for a brief closeup of Alfred E.
Neuman's eyes during the opening screens.
In 1996, Mad #350 included a CD-ROM featuring Mad-related
software as well as three audio files.[69]
In 1999,
Brøderbund/The
Learning Company released Totally Mad, a
Microsoft Windows 95/98 compatible CD-ROM set collecting the
magazine's content from #1 through #376 (December 1998), plus over
100 Mad Specials including most of the recorded audio
inserts. Despite the title, it omitted a handful of articles due to
problems clearing the rights on some book excerpts and text taken
from recordings, such as
Andy Griffith's "What
It Was, Was Football." In 2006, Graphic Imaging Technology's
DVD-ROM Absolutely Mad updated the original Totally Mad
content through 2005. A single seven-gigabyte disc, it is missing
the same deleted material from the 1999 collection.[70]
It differs from the earlier release in that it is
Macintosh compatible.
Another
Spy vs. Spy video game was made in 2005 for the
PlayStation 2,
Xbox, and
Microsoft Windows. A Mad app was released for
iPad on
April 1, 2012.[71]
It displays the contents of each new issue beginning with Mad
#507, as well as video clips from
Mad-TV, and material from the magazine's website, The
Idiotical.
See also
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Winn, Marie (1981-01-25).
"Winn, Marie. "What Became of Childhood Innocence?", ''The
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Corliss, Richard (April 29,
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"The Glory and Horror of EC Comics". Time.
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^
Franklin Harris.
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2011-02-02.
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^
a
b
http://www.motherjones.com/media/2010/09/interview-al-jaffee-mad-life-snappy-answers
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a
b
"Slaubaugh, Mike. "Mad Magazine Circulation figures''".
Users.ipfw.edu. Retrieved
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^ [url=http://www.toonopedia.com/mad.htm
Mad] at
Don Markstein's Toonopedia. Retrieved on February 02,
2011.
Archived from the original on March 15, 2012.
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^
MAD (E. C.
Publications) 1 (42): 1. November 1958. "MAD -
November 1958, Volume I, Number 42, is published monthly
except January, April, July and October..."
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^
MAD (E. C.
Publications) (335): 2. May 1995. "MAD - (ISSN 0024 9319) is
published monthly except bimonthly for January/February,
March/April, July/August and October/November..."
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^
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Publications) (336): 2. June 1995. "MAD - (ISSN 0024 9319)
is published monthly except bimonthly for January/February,
March/April and October/November..."
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^
MAD (E. C.
Publications) (352): 2. December 1996. "MAD - (ISSN 0024
9319) is published monthly except bimonthly for
January/February..."
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^
MAD (E. C.
Publications) (353): 2. January 1997. "MAD - (ISSN 0024
9319) is published monthly by E. C. Publications Inc..."
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^
George Gene Gustines. "Sad News for Mad Fans"
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^ Mad, Issue
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^
Kehr, Dave (2006-08-20).
"When Unmanly Men Met Womanly Wome".
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"Mike Lynch Cartoons: 1977 NY Times: 25 Years of Mad
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2007-08-15. Retrieved
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Jan Herman. "MAD Magazine + Tom Hayden = SDS"
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^ Ortved, John;
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Carmody, Deirdre (2009-04-13).
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^ "MAD About
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Heller, Jason (2007-03-29).
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GOOD Magazine | Goodmagazine - The 51 Best* Magazines Ever-
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^ Gilliam,
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^ Foreword to
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[1] (in Hungarian)
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^ According to
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magazine folded under pressure from Mexico's Public
Education Bureau (SEP) over lewd language, from the Mexican
government over political content, and a "kid-cover"
incident in issue #110 in which an underaged fan tattooed
his back on behalf of the magazine without parental
permission.
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^ Jacobs, Frank.
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Sources
- Evanier, Mark, Mad Art, Watson Guptil
Publications, 2002,
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- Jacobs, Frank, The 'Mad' World of William M. Gaines,
Secaucus, N.J.: Lyle Stuart, 1972; Without ISBN
-
Reidelbach, Maria, Completely Mad, Little Brown,
1991,
ISBN 0-316-73890-5
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