I just bought the new MAD , #512 and bi-monthly now ( At least they're not re-numbering !!! Oops , I probably shouldn't have said that !...) , with a Walking Dead cover , and blurbs for " The Zit Hall Of Fame " , Snappy Answers , and ( Sergio's look at , as it turned out...) " The Apocalypse " , probably inspired by that bloke , not far from me in Oakland ,CA , who , well...........( Though 2012 is covered as well . ) Sergio told me at Wondercon a coupla years back that his Mad " Look At " strips tend to be based on editors' suggestions .
What do you think of Mad now ?
In many ways , it created the world we have lived in for the last 30-ish years . Inevitably , has it been left somewhat behind ?
I recall MSA saying - at the old CBGXtra ? - that he felt Mad should do more humor aimed at adults , pointing to the " classic " B&W Feldstein era , and an article about zits might be seen as something likely to rise up a climate disturbance from somewhere in the convergence of Wicker and Hyde parks and the Magnificent Mile ( Oprah's old flat ????? ) , saying " This is exactly what I DIDN'T want !!!!! Arrrrgggghh !!!!!!!!!!! " ! MSA probably didn't say he wanted stories addressed to the concerns of those who read Mad in the Silver Age's concerns NOW , but...
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It used to be that MAD magazine was something one had to grow into; now it’s something to be grown out of.
ClarkKent_DC wrote:
"I feel that MAD, in the name of keeping up with the times, has gotten sleazier instead of funnier. It's turned into the kind of thing I'd want to keep away from a kid instead of sharing with him."
That's a shame. Seems to me some years ago I thumbed thru a new issue of MAD, and put it BACK. Nothing in there seemed interesting to me.
The sad thing, when I think about it, is that I recall getting "hooked" on MAD (at least, the occasional issue here and there) before I started buying comics regularly. My intro to MAD was my Mom's optometrist's office. His place was on Spring Garden Street in Philly, and maybe once a year or so we'd go there, and while she was getting her eyes examined, I'd be thumbing thru the magazines he had on display. Some comics, some magazines. I seem to recall one day seeing the issue of SUB-MARINER which guest-starred Dr. Strange (coming up out of his grave like a ghost). But it was MAD that grabbed me. Usually-- just like at the corner barber shop-- if I was reading something and liked it, he'd say, "Go ahead, you can take it home." My 1st issue of MAD, if memory serves, featured "IN THE OUT EXIT" (the movie parody of
"UP THE DOWN STAIRCASE"). Suffice to say, when I happened to catch the movie on a nertwork showing a couple years later (out of curiosity), I didn't enjoy it as much as the MAD version.
I might not have been 10 years old when I got ahold of that 1st MAD. I racked up quite a few dozen issues after that over the next 2 decades. Somewhere in the mid-80's, I started to get bored with it. Maybe they just lost most of the artists I liked, I dunno. But long before it had its big change of direction, I was already long gone.
"Hey Shiv! You dig school?"
"You bet! It's the one place the cops wouldn't think of looking for me!"
when I was in elementary school, I used to read the parodies of all the movies, whether I had seen them or not (and let's face it... most of them I hadn't). Years later, in high school, I was able to impress my friends by displaying a familiarity with films most of them had only heard about.
Emerkeith Davyjack said:
No, that's not it.
Yes, I am older, and yes, I come to today's MAD with an adult's eyes, and a parent's sensibilities ... but that's not the problem I have with today's MAD. It IS sleazier than it used to be.
Jeff of Earth-J said:
"Sophomoric, juvenile and adolescent" might be thought of as some of MAD's strengths. I have no objection to those aspects of MAD.