MAD Magazine And All-Purpose Parodies/Satire Thread .

[Emerkeith Davyjack]

I bought recently the new issue of MAD , with a Romney/Obama " devils " cover and a parody of the Avengers movie .

  It had occured to me that , " As a DC publication , perhaps Mad would be not that likely to get an advance screening and pics to work from , etc. , as Mad's movie-parody producers have , at times , received in the past - It's DC's competitor behind the basic concept of the movie , anyway , which might occur to Disney "...And , frankly , MAD places less emphasis on movie parodies in general now , and may be seen as a little too " old hat " a magazine now .

[Kirk G]

I remember buying exactly one copy of National Lampoon in my life...the cable tv listings parody issue.. and to this day, I laugh my ass off reading some of the inane descriptions and ongoing battles in the letters page between "Liza Maneli" and the editors.  Why didn't I discover this years before?

PowerBook Pete (aka Tim Cousar) said:

National Lampoon as a magazine ended in 1998, by the way.

[Mr. Silver Age]

I think MAD had to evolve to keep its audience and stay current with the culture and popular art styles. As others noted, I wish they hadn't reverted to junior-high humor and so many booger and fart jokes and satires of report cards.

When I was reading it back in the day, it was aimed at an older audience, and I think that's what readers want--they want to see what's coming. It makes it seem as if it's "sophisticated," even if it's just about frat boys.

I have a complete NatLamp collection through the first four or five years, although I haven't pulled it out in a long time. There is no overall collection of NatLamp comic books, more's the pity, but they are included in the Best of books that are reasonably readily available.

This one has the best comics parodies, I think: http://www.marksverylarge.com/booksetc/comics.html  and it's available here: http://www.amazon.com/NATIONAL-LAMPOON-COMICS-Vol-No/dp/B000R4249E/...

Man, this Internet thing is cool. It just might catch on.

-- MSA

[Jeff of Earth-J]

Briefly put (and I am not the first one to say this), MAD used be sometning one had to grow into; now it's something one grows out of. 

[Emerkeith Davyjack]

...How old are you , Jeff ???

Jeff of Earth-J said:

Briefly put (and I am not the first one to say this), MAD used be sometning one had to grow into; now it's something one grows out of. 

[Emerkeith Davyjack]

...I do remember NatLamp pieces occasionally by females making jokes about " Aren't you all a bunch of upper-middle class Midwestern boys gone Harvard ??? " re: NatLamps' regulars' demographic leanings !!!!!!!!!

George Poague said:

My memory is that Mad was something you read until you were old enough for the National Lampoon and its pictures of naked ladies. The target audience for Mad was always junior high kids; for the Lampoon, it was high school and college students. Readers for both magazines were heavily male. Considering the Lampoon's blatant misogyny in the '70s, I can't imagine many women liking it.

[Emerkeith Davyjack]

...I remember a woman named Ann Beatts - In an all-Sunday strips-satirizing article IIRC  , on " comics " pulp paper like the comic-book parodies' interiors , hers was titled " Beattsy " and parodied " Nancy " and might have featured the joke I quoted above .

[Emerkeith Davyjack]

...SFGate/the San Francisco Chronicle has an article to-day about a " MAD " show at SF's SOMA district/Mission Street Cartoon Art Museum , a nifty place I probably didn't go to enough when I lived there .

  They have been running a MAD-honoring show , they're concluding it soon , with a " MAD MEN-inspired cocktail party " , I can't really put a link up now but the word " feted " is in the header !!!!! :-)
 (I also thought that I had written down the byline of the reporter whoi wrote it but I just jotted down the last - Peitzman .)