Yesterday I bought a small stack of 14 MAD magazines published between 1961 and 1970. I have seen some of the features reprinted before, but most of them were new to me. My older brother never read a comic book in his life (as far as I know), but he did collect MAD when he was young. He particularly liked the fold-ins, so before he traded them the the kid across thre street, he ripped off the back covers. The across-the-street neighbor passed them on to his little brother (my age) who wasn't a reader, so I eventually ended up with a stack of coverless MAD magazines and a manilla envelope of back covers. (I never knew what happened to the front covers.)
When I was very young, before I could read, my mother used to read the "Sunday funnies" to me. I would sit on her lap and point to the ones I wanted her to read. (I remember my favorites at the time were Li'l Abner, Pogo and Smokey Stover.) One time I was sitting with my sister and she read MAD to me. Again, I indicated the features I was interested in, but Dave Berg didn't appeal to me at the time (it looked too "grown up"). Instead of skipping it, I had to sit there quietly as she read it to herself! My grandmother used to read MAD to me, too, but one time I caught her trying to "censor" something she didn't approve of.
When I got a little older and started to read for myself, I still didn't rerad the entire magazine. (At that time, MAD was something you grew into, not out of.) The first MAD paperbacks bought specifically for me were the "Spy vs. Spy" ones. I loved those even before I could read. From there I moved on to the features drawn by Don Martin, Sergio Aragones and some of the other more "cartoony" artists. Eventually I began reading the entire thing and got a subscription. Every couple of years I go through a "MAD phase" and I'm just entering into one now. I'll probably add a few more posts to this thread as they occur to me, but I invite anyone who cares to to add his thoughts about MAD magazine.
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In addition to the magazines themselves, my brother also had several MAD paperbacks, among them MAD in Orbit and The Three Ring MAD. (He also had a few earlier ones which I didn't care for as much at the time.) As I mentioned, the first ones I picked out for myself were the "Spy vs. Spy" ones by Antonio Prohias, but I also had Don Martin Steps Out, Don Martin Bounces Back, Don Martin Drops 13 Stories, and of course The MAD Adventures of Captain Klutz. (I don't have any of those anymore, nor do I recall exactly what happened to them.)
I remember one time I was in the supermarket shopping with my grandmother and trying to convince her to buy The Mad Book of Magic (and Other Dirty Tricks) by Al Jaffe for me, but it was a hard sell. She was extremely leery about the word "dirty" in the title. I finally talked her into it, but continued selling her on the idea after we got back to her house by saying things such as, "Now that's a dirty trick!" as I read it.
Issues of Mad floated around our house for years, because it was read broadly by the four siblings and, occasionally, by our parents, but then only at the cottage*
The Mad Book of Magic and Other Dirty Tricks was, I think, the first Mad paperback we had. I still have a couple of paperbacks I got as a kid (Mad Strikes Back and The Portable Mad), but not that one. As an adult, I bought Maria Reidelbach's Completely Mad: A History of the Comic Book and Magazine, and John Benson and Jay Lynch's The Sincerest Form of Parody: The Best 1950s Mad Inspired Satirical Comics.
I held onto my intact copy of Mad 196 with their original Star Wars parody, but later gave it to a nephew who is a huge Star Wars fan. He still has it on a shelf with other Star Wars-related ephemera.
*We called it "the Camp." It was a literal log cabin, built by my dad and his brothers on land our bachelor uncle bought in the 1950s. It later got expanded into an actual cottage, and, after our parents' death (my dad inherited, as the last one standing), it sold. By then, the 1950s rural road off Lake Superior was a highish-end bedroom and cottager community. Not exactly a Mad memory, but it's a footnote, so what do you expect?
When I brought home my first issue of Mad my older sister felt compelled to tell our mother,"Mad is even worse than those comic books he reads!". Gee thanks, sis.
Of course that didn't stop me from reading Mad regularly for the next 5 or 6 years, nor did it stop my mother from buying me Mad paperbacks as stocking stuffers on more than one Christmas.
When it came time for my brother to go to college and my parents drove him to SEMO for freshman orientation of parents' day or whatever it was called, they dragged me along even though I was neither a student nor a parent and had no business there. As I recall, one of the first items on the agenda was a tour of the campus, which included the university library, where they dropped me off while they did their thing. Actually, after discovering the periodicals section, I may have suggested it. I later saw the 8mm home movies they shot of the day; I didn't miss much.
Instead, I discovered bound volumes of MAD magazine! The first volume they had began with #24, and I assumed that the volumes comprising #1-23 had been stolen (since periodicals weren't allowed to be checked out). Little did I know at the the time that the first 23 issue of MAD were a comic book. I coveted those volumes more than anything else up to that time, and precious little since. I spend a memorable day reading backissues of MAD, and at the end of the day when my parents came to pick me up, I wasn't ready to leave. When I went to college (UMC), the first thing I did at the university library was to check out periodicals section, but alas, no MAD. :(
After my brother went off to college, I had to begin buying my own MAD magazines. (His MAD-buying was sporadic at best.) I suspect the switchover came circa #152, because I rarely missed an issue after that for the next five years. By 1977 I had a subscription, which I continued to renew through high school. By the time I went to college, my subscription was still running, but I didn't bother to change my address. I would catch up when I went home on breaks, but it just wasn't the same anymore, and I let my subscription lapse circa 1984.
I remember one time, a decade earlier, I came home from school to find that my mother had taked a scissors to the front cover of MAD #166.
I never forgave her for that.
Here's a piece of mine from 2005. Most of this information is probably old news to people here.
Max Gaines generally receives credit for inventing and popularizing the comic book in its familiar form. During the Great Depression, he took reprints of existing strips, repackaged them in half-tabloid size, and sold the product. The comic-book boom followed and, while his company, EC, initially made money, many of his rivals did far better with original properties such as Superman, Captain America, and Archie. EC later developed an educational line; it never sold especially well.
In 1948, Gaines died in a boating accident on Lake Placid. His son, William M. Gaines, inherited a company now in debt. He quickly changed the direction, drawing on talent such as Wally Wood, Harvey Kurtzman, and Al Feldstein, and developing successful comics in various genres. While EC's romance and western titles did moderately well for a time, it was their crime, war, and horror comics that redefined the genre, and ranked among the most popular and controversial of the 1950s.
In 1952, Gaines suggested that Kurtzman develop a humor comic. They had both been impressed by college magazines, and wondered if the rowdy, subversive humor that characterized these publications would connect with a mainstream audience.
The result, Mad, first appeared on newsstands in October/November 1952. The first issue spoofed comics by genre: it featured a mock-horror story, a crime comic story, and so on. The stories, written by Kurtzman, ridiculed the conventions that EC had helped establish. The artwork, by a variety of EC regulars, established the "chicken fat" style that would dominate Mad; sight gags and bizarre visuals oozed into every corner of every panel. Bill Elder generally receives credit for inventing the style, but other EC artists, such as Wally Wood, certainly developed it in their Mad illustrations. Until #17, the comic went by the apparent title, Tales Calculated to Drive You Mad. Those first five words would be dropped for the next few issues thereafter, and sporadically reappear throughout the run of Mad’s four-color incarnation.
The first three issues did not sell particularly well, but #4 clicked with a wider audience. That issue featured Mad’s first parody of a specific character; Superduperman! sent up, of course, DC’s premiere superhero. DC threatened to sue; Kurtzman argued that parody was protected by the American Constitution. The case never came to court, however. Gaines simply ignored the objection, DC never bothered to push the matter, and Mad thereafter zeroed in on identifiable characters. Issue #6 features "Teddy and the Pirates" (Terry and the Pirates) and "Melvin of the Apes" (Tarzan), but also their first spoof of a specific film, "Ping Pong" (King Kong). By #10, parodies of Batman and Wonder Woman had appeared, and other popular films had received the Mad treatment. Their satiric/parodic territory quickly expanded to include television and radio shows, and all aspects of pop culture.
The comic connected with teenagers, in particular. The postwar culture tended to take itself very seriously, and Mad began skewering this brave new world, in which citizens had become consumers and advertising set public tastes. Not surprisingly, success bred imitators. These would prove short-lived, though Cracked and Crazy managed to survive, the former into the twenty-first century. Archie comics’ take on Mad, entitled Madhouse, meanwhile, introduced long-lasting character Sabrina, the Teenage Witch in a 1962 story. EC responded to the many knock-offs by launching Panic, the official licensed imitation of Mad.
Mad delivered quality in satire and goofy humor, but it also managed to be decidedly weirder than its competitors. Most comics, prior to the early 1970s, took advantage of a loophole that allowed for a cheaper mailing rate for any periodical containing at least two pages of text.1. Mad accommodated the ruling by purchasing inexpensive stories in obscure foreign languages, and inserting randomly-selected pages into the comic. They also showed a fondness for re-using odd-sounding words, such as furshlugginer, ganef, potrzebie, and veeblefetzer. Other recurring references included the names "Melvin Cowznofski" (spelling varied) and "Alfred E. Neuman." In many illustrations, a strangely-constructed Mad zeppelin flew overhead, for no particular reason.
In 1955, Senate hearings vilified comics and the industry, in response, adopted the Comics Code. The new guidelines virtually destroyed EC's horror and crime lines. By then, Mad now ranked among their most profitable publications, so Gaines chose to focus on that, escaping the limitations of the code by turning Mad, with #24, into a magazine.
Gaines made two unusual decisions about the new format. He banned advertisements, because he did not want to be, or even appear, beholden to any potential target of satire. Mad's profits were to come from the sale of the magazine and related merchandise. He also insisted it be printed on cheap paper.
The first Mad spin-off had already appeared: The Mad Reader (1955) recycled older material into a paperback. It also featured an image taken from an old advertisement: a gap-toothed, tousle-haired, crooked-eyed kid.
Issue #23 marked the first regular appearance of the image that would become known as Alfred E. Neuman. The kid now entirely associated with Mad has a lengthy history as an advertiser's icon, going back to the late 1800s. No one has ever found the origin of the image, which had appeared everywhere from dentist's ads to airplane nose art, often accompanied by slogans like, "What me worry?" One unverified story even claims an artist based him on an actual photograph.2 Mad connected the image to the Neuman name in #26, and he has appeared on nearly every cover of the magazine.3 His association with Mad became so complete that in 1963, one John S. Henry sent a letter from Auckland, New Zealand with an image of Alfred instead of an address. It made it to the Mad offices.
In its early years, the magazine often hired "hip" celebrities and disc jockeys to contribute. Ernie Kovacs, Orson Bean, Bob and Ray, Al "Jazzbo" Collins, Danny Kaye, Sid Caesar, and Jean Shepherd all wrote pieces for Mad in the late 50s and early 60s.
Quickly, however, Mad acquired a stable of freelance contributors who became celebrities in their own right, at least among the magazine’s readership. Sergio Aragones, Dave Berg, Dick DeBartolo, Jack Davis, Mort Drucker, Frank Jacobs, Al Jaffee, Don Martin, and Antonio Prohias all became associated with the magazine during its next two decades. Jaffee introduced features such as "Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions" and, in 1965, the fold-in. He also specialized in bizarre inventions. Martin’s hinge-footed characters and loopy sound effects became a mainstay of the magazine. Berg’s cartoons lampooned middle class concerns. Prohias introduced "Spy vs Spy," a Cold War-inspired strip that continues to this day, though others now write and draw the spies' oddball adventures.
By the mid-1960s, the magazine established a format of bookending most issues with a movie parody and a TV show parody. The satire often grew more political, more pointed, and occasionally, prescient. "How Madison Avenue Could Sell America to the World" (#65, 1961) seems more like commentary than satire. "If Magazine Ads Spoke the Language of the Magazine"(1964) presaged demographic-targeted advertising and narrowcasting. Readers started to refer to "Mad ESP" whenever one of the magazine’s far-fetched ideas actually turned up in the real world.
In the 1960s Mad was acquired by the Kinney Corporation which was itself purchased by Warner Communications later that decade, but Gaines was left to run the magazine as he saw fit. After his death in 1992, however, the parent corporation began to make changes. Mad now used slick paper, and eventually accepted advertisements. By then, the once-subversive magazine had become an institution and, in a less hegemonic and more ironic culture, seemed less culturally significant. Nevertheless, it continues to sell, and a new generation of artists and writers have found their niche there, including Tom Bunk, John Caldwell, Desmond Devlin, Barry Liebmann, Hermann Mejia, Andrew J. Schwartzberg, Mike Snider, and Bill Wray.
Mad has produced spin-offs and merchandise, including Alfred E. Neuman model kits and action figures, and a board game. A musical appeared off-Broadway in 1966, entitled The Mad Show; Alfred's image featured prominently. In 1980 Mad financed a film, Up the Academy, which introduced future Karate Kid Ralph Macchio. The flick was a disaster, a poorly-written story about a military school which featured some very crude gags and (briefly) Alfred E. Neuman. Mad apologized to their readership and arranged to have all references to the magazine, and Alfred's cameo, removed. In 1995, the magazine lent its name to a tv show. Clearly modeled on Saturday Night Live, Mad-TV featured sketch comedy and animations starring the characters from "Spy vs Spy."
Mad began as an anarchic comic book, matured into a savaging of pop culture, and now blends into the mainstream. It appears that it will continue for some time-- and we will always need the mad spirit to remind us that, oftentimes, we already look foolish.
1. If you've ever wondered why older comics contain hastily-written, one-page text stories or historical articles, this is the reason.
2.Joyce Widoff, quoted on page 150 of Reidelbach's Completely Mad: A History of the Comic Book and Magazine. Many people have noticed similarities between Alfred and people born with Williams Syndrome.
3. Alfred-free covers include #115 (1967) #163 (1973) #166 (1974), #195 (1977), 233 (1982), 247 (1984), 254 (1985), 327 and 329 (1994). Some other covers only feature his outline or his feet.
Most of this information is probably old news to people here.
Appreciated nevertheless.
(And here I thought you were going to provide the story behind the cover of #166.)
No, but I mention it in footnote #3.
The first MAD Special I bought was #9, which also happened to be the first to reprint a bound-in comic book of material from MAD's original incarnation in the '50s. I bought all of the subsequent ones as well, so I've been aware of the comic book material from early on. But I either didn't read the blurb "An Assortment of MAD Collectors' Items from the '50s" or I didn't believe it, because I thought that these reprints represented the kind of comic books MAD might have published in the '50s. I don't remember when I finally realized that MAD began as a comic book.
1997 saw the publication of Tales Calulated to Drive You MAD, eight issues reprinting the 23 comic book issues in color magazine format, three originals per issue. I didn't need those issues, because at the time I already had the four-volume color slip-cased set published by Russ Cochran. Because 23 is not evenly divisible by three, it was announced in advance that the eighth issue would reprint the first magazine issue, #24, as well. That I didn't have, and decided to support the series in hope of ensuring that #8 (reprinting #24) would be published. (This is one of two times in my life I have duplicated material by "voting with my dollars," and both times it has come back to bite me in the arse.) By the time #8 was published, plans had changed and new material was subsituted for the promised #24.
Surprisingly, finding an original copy of MAD #24 has not proven difficult to come by, but finding a reasonably priced copy is.
I did eventually acquire one... after a fashion... but that didn't exactly work out, either.
In 2006 I bought a set of 600+ issues on DVD-Rom. I didn't particularly want a collection of MAD that I had to use a computer to read, but I thought maybe if a shelled out the money for the disc, maybe doing so would shake the comic book gods into finally releasing the archival set on paper I had been holding out for. The day I bought it, I stayed up all night reading it. I have used it once or twice for research [purposes since. The most recent time I tried to use it, earlier this year, I discovered my current PC doesn't support it. So I do have a nigh complete collection of MAD... but no way to read the furshlugginer things!
Can you get a peripheral that would allow you to read it? At this point I have peripherals for everything, including floppy discs.
On another note, we share a similar memory. The first time my brother and I had a Mad Special with an inset comic, we also thought it was Mad's idea of an old comic book, or perhaps, reprints from old issues of the magazine to which colour had been added.
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