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| Editor | Harvey Kurtzman (1952-1956); Al Feldstein (1956-1984); John Ficarra (1984- ) and Nick Meglin (1984-2004) |
| Categories | Satirical magazine |
| Frequency | Monthly |
| Circulation | 200,000–2,100,000 |
| First issue | October–November 1952 |
| Company | DC Comics |
| Country |  United States
|
| Language | English |
| Website | dccomics.com/mad |
| ISSN | 0024-9319 |
Mad is an American humor magazine founded by editor Harvey Kurtzman and publisher William Gaines in 1952. It is the last surviving title from the notorious and critically acclaimed EC Comics line.
Offering satire on all aspects of American life and pop culture, the monthly publication deflates stuffed shirts and pokes fun at common frailties.
With its first issue released in August 1952 (but cover-dated October-November), Mad was a comic book, and part of the line of EC Comics published from the Lower East Side in New York City in offices located at 225 Lafayette Street. The magazine remained at that location until the summer of 1961 when it moved to 850 Third Avenue.
The phrase "Tales Calculated to Drive You" above the title Mad referenced radio\'s Suspense which often used the opening, "Tales well calculated to keep you in... Suspense!" The vertical subtitle, "Humor in a Jugular Vein," indicated the possibility of a sinister edge to the satire (as well as being wordplay on "jocular").
Written almost entirely by Harvey Kurtzman, the first issue displayed the cartoon talents of Kurtzman, 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; Severin, a mainstay of Kurtzman\'s EC war comics, was phased out of Mad by the tenth issue. Kurtzman included his own cartooning only sporadically, primarily on the covers. However, he was known as an exceedingly "hands-on" editor and a visual master, and thus many Mad articles were illustrated in strict accordance with Kurtzman\'s detailed layouts. A handful of other artists contributed to the original run, including Bernard Krigstein, Russ Heath, and most conspicuously among the non-regulars, Basil Wolverton. Wolverton\'s grotesque faces made a striking impression despite only appearing in two issues of the comic book.
The first two issues of Mad spoofed only comic book and movie genres of romance, horror, sports and science fiction without overtly specific references. However, with the third issue, Kurtzman turned to direct parodies, targeting two well-known radio programs with ("Dragged Net!") and the "Lone Stranger!." This approach proved fruitful, and in short order Kurtzman was gleefully hammering away at such targets as newspaper comic strips ("Little Orphan Melvin!"), comic books ("Superduperman!"), movies ("Ping Pong!") and television ("Howdy Dooit!").
By the summer of 1953, the success of Mad was apparent, and Gaines made plans for expansion. After nine bi-monthly issues, Mad became a monthly with the April, 1954 issue. At that same time, EC Comics launched another satirical bi-monthly, Panic, edited by Al Feldstein. Since this new title also used Kurtzman\'s core trio of artists (Davis, Elder, Wood), the peeved editor felt that Panic sapped and diminished the creative energy necessary to meet Mad\'s production schedule.
In 1955, with issue 24, the comic book was converted into a magazine. The popular myth is that this was done to escape the strictures of the Comics Code Authority, which was imposed in 1955 following United States Congressional hearings on juvenile delinquency. Actually, Kurtzman had received a lucrative offer from the publisher of the digest periodical Pageant, and only stayed when Gaines agreed to convert Mad to a magazine format. The immediate practical result was that Mad acquired a broader range in both subject matter and presentation. Magazines had wider distribution than comic books, and a more adult readership.
However, the Comics Code Authority had proven fatal to most of Gaines\' EC Comics line due to restrictions on title and content. Publisher Gaines suffered both financially and creatively from targeted industry censorship, and the enmity of his fellow publishers. EC\'s national distributor, Leader News, was the nation\'s weakest and did not have the clout to withstand an undeclared industry boycott of EC product: the company\'s comics were frequently returned still in their original unopened bundles. These factors combined to drive all EC Comics from the stands, except for Mad, which was too profitable to ignore. The company\'s financial status grew shakier in 1956 when Leader News declared bankruptcy, leaving EC over $100,000 in debt. Only the Gaines family\'s investment of capital and a fortuitous deal with the much stronger American News distributor kept Mad afloat.
After the bulk of EC\'s line was canceled in 1954-55, the company was completely reliant on the improving fortunes of Mad. In a creative showdown, Kurtzman insisted on a 51 percent share in the company or else he would quit; when Gaines rejected the demand, EC was without its creative dynamo, and Kurtzman was separated from the magazine that crystallized his talents. Al Feldstein returned to EC, and oversaw Mad during its greatest heights of circulation. Taking over with issue #29, Feldstein set to work assembling a phalanx of talented humor writers and cartoonists. Feldstein\'s first issue as editor coincided with the debut of Don Martin: crucial longterm contributors such as prolific writer Frank Jacobs and star caricaturist Mort Drucker quickly followed. Before the classic Mad staff was assembled, Feldstein also relied on celebrity guest contributions to attract attention and fill pages. Some of these pieces, attributed to Bob and Ray, were actually the work of their main writer Tom Koch, who would flourish in Mad for decades under his own byline. By the early 1960s, with notables such as Antonio Prohias and Dave Berg well in hand, editor Feldstein had fully established the format that was a commercial success for decades.
Al Feldstein joined Mad in the same year that Time described it as a "short-lived satirical pulp." By the time he left, 28 years later, the magazine was commonly cited as one of the three greatest publishing successes of the 1950s, along with Playboy and TV Guide. The magazine\'s circulation more than quadrupled during Feldstein\'s tenure, peaking at 2,132,655 in 1974, although it declined to a third of this figure by the end of his time as editor.
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. Meglin retired in 2004. Ficarra continues to edit the magazine today.
Though there are antecedents to Mad’s style of humor in print, radio and film, the overall package was a unique one that stood out in a staid era. 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. The approach was described by Dave Kehr in The New York Times:
Appropriately, Bob and Ray, Kovacs and Freberg all became contributors to Mad.
In 1977, Tony Hiss and Jeff Lewis wrote in The New York Times about the then-25-year-old publication\'s initial impact:
Mad is often credited with filling a vital gap in political satire in the 1950s to 1970s, when Cold War paranoia and a general culture of censorship prevailed in the United States, especially in literature for teens. 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.
Mad\'s satiric net was cast wide. The magazine often featured parodies of ongoing American 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, psychoanalysis, gun control, pollution, the Vietnam War and recreational drug use. The magazine gave equal time, generally negative, to counterculture drugs such as cannabis, as well as taking a savage approach toward mainstream drugs such as tobacco and alcohol (although "Arthur," a non sequitur image which appeared in the background of many articles, was a cannabis plant). Although one can detect a generally liberal tone, Mad always slammed Democrats as mercilessly as Republicans. The magazine also ran a good deal of less-topical material on such varied topics as fairy tales, nursery rhymes, greeting cards, sports, small talk, poetry, marriage, comic strips, awards shows, cars and many other areas of general interest.
In 2007, the Los Angeles Times\' Robert Boyd wrote, "All I really need to know I learned from Mad magazine," going on to assert:
In 1994, Brian Siano (The Humanist) discussed the eye-opening aspects of Mad:
Rock singer Patti Smith said, "After Mad, drugs were nothing." 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!"
Mad was long noted for its absence of advertising, enabling it to skewer the excesses of a materialist culture without fear of advertiser reprisal. For decades, it was by far the most successful American magazine to publish ad-free, 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, and the magazine later made a deal with Moxie soda that involved inserting the Moxie logo into various articles. Mad also 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 featured 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, or promotional items such as ceramic busts or a line of Mad jewelry. Mad often explicitly promised that it would never make its mailing list available to anyone to exploit.
Both Kurtzman and Feldstein had wanted the magazine to solicit advertising; each editor felt 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 produce a "dummy" copy of what an issue with ads could look like. But Bill Gaines was reluctant and intractable, telling 60 Minutes, "We long ago decided we couldn\'t take money from Pepsi-Cola and make fun of Coca-Cola." However, Gaines\' primary motivation in eschewing ad dollars was less philosophical than practical:
For tax reasons, Gaines sold his company in the early 1960s to the Kinney Parking Company. Kinney was in the process of becoming a conglomerate, including acquiring National Periodicals (aka DC Comics) and Warner Bros. by the end of that decade. Though technically an employee for 30 years, the fiercely independent Gaines was named a Kinney board member, and was largely permitted to run Mad as he saw fit without corporate interference.
Following Gaines\' June 3, 1992 death, Mad became more ingrained within the Time Warner corporate structure, which did not share Gaines\' idiosyncratic ideas about marketing Mad. Since Time Warner viewed Mad as not unlike a comic book, they turned the magazine over to DC Comics\' publishers Jenette Kahn and Paul Levitz. Kahn and Levitz, in turn, appointed DC Vice President Joe Orlando as the magazine\'s new associate publisher, since Orlando was closely involved with DC licensing. Further, Orlando had been a staff artist with E.C. Comics in the 1950s, a prolific contributor to Mad during the 1960s and a regular with the National Lampoon during the 1970s. Time Warner put a much stronger emphasis on Mad merchandising and licensing, including products for the chain of Warner Studio Stores. Orlando spearheaded that operation through his Special Projects department at DC Comics, and a key component was the creation of the Mad Style Guide (1994), edited by Bhob Stewart and featuring new artwork by Tom Bunk, Sergio Aragonés, Angelo Torres and George Woodbridge.
Eventually, the magazine was obliged to abandon its long-time home at 485 Madison Avenue (printed as "MADison" Avenue in the masthead), and in the mid-1990s it moved into DC Comics\' offices at the same time DC relocated to 1700 Broadway. Although Orlando retired from DC Comics in 1996, he continued to maintain an office at Mad until his death in 1998.
In 2001, the magazine broke its long-standing taboo and began running advertising. Today, the magazine is published by a branch of DC Comics and in recent years has used its advertising revenue to increase the use of color and improve the magazine\'s paper stock. Most features are now in color, but each issue still contains black-and-white material.
By early 1978, Mad was obliged to include a UPC symbol on its covers. The magazine responded by devoting the entire front cover of issue #198 to a giant UPC bar code, saying they hoped it would "jam every computer in the country" for "forcing us to deface our covers with this yecchy UPC symbol from now on." For more than two years, subsequent issues labeled the normal-sized symbol with a variety of humorous captions, such as "Closeup of the gap in Alfred E. Neuman\'s teeth" and "Exclusive! FBI releases Bionic Man\'s fingerprints!" or "Hair of man watching horror movie."
The Mad logo has remained virtually unchanged since 1955, save for the decision to italicize the lettering beginning in 1997. The title is sometimes seen in all uppercase letters, but Maria Reidelbach, in her comprehensive, authorized study, Completely Mad: A History of the Comic Book and Magazine (Little, Brown, 1991), makes it clear that the title is correct in upper and lowercase. For many years, the mysterious letters "IND" appeared in small type within the logo, between the M and the A. Sometimes the Mad logo included cavorting centaurs within the lettering, one of whom would be pointing directly at the IND. Though some fans speculated about the secret meaning of the "M-IND" message, the truth was more prosaic: from 1957 on, the magazine was handled by Independent News Distribution.
In a parody of Playboy\'s "fold-out" centerfolds, each issue of Mad from 1964 onward featured a "fold-in" on its inside back cover, designed by artist Al Jaffee. A question would be asked, often of a topical nature, which apparently was illustrated by a picture taking up the bulk of the page. But when the page was folded inward, the inner and outer fourths of the picture combined to reveal a surprising answer in both picture and words. Until 1967, fold-ins were presented in black-and-white.
The feature has rarely been omitted: only single issues in 1968 and 1977 have lacked a fold-in. Another example was the 1980 Mad Disco special, which was printed with stiff cardboard covers, making a fold-in impractical. With nearly 400 fold-ins to date, Jaffee\'s work has appeared in more issues of Mad than any other artist.
From 1961- 2002, Dave Berg produced "The Lighter Side of..." which often satirized the suburban lifestyle, capitalism and the generation gap. Subjects commonly lampooned include medicine, office life, parties, marriage, psychiatry, shopping, school and other everyday activities.
Although this feature eventually became notorious for its corny gags and garishly outdated fashion choices, the Mad editors, over decades, claimed it was the magazine\'s most popular feature. It was quite sharp in its early years, providing the sort of Americana-based humor that standups such as Shelley Berman and Alan King performed successfully onstage. "The Lighter Side of..." feature was retired with Berg\'s death.
Four months after the last Berg artwork was published, his final set of gags, which Berg had not penciled, appeared as a tribute. These last "Lighter Side" strips were divided among 18 of MAD\'s regular artists.
Antonio Prohías\'s wordless "Spy vs. Spy," the never-ending battle between the iconic Black Spy and White Spy, has outlasted the Cold War that inspired it. Except for the respective black/white color of their clothing, the two spies were identical in appearance and intent. The strip was a silent parable about the futility of mutually-assured destruction, with various elaborate deathtraps designed in Prohías\' thick line. Almost always, the trap would boomerang back on the spy who had concocted it. In many cases, the backfiring result would have been anticipated by the first spy, who would then spring a counter-counteraction, thus defeating the opposing spy whom the trap was supposed to have targeted. The dead Spy would be restored to life in the successive strip. There was no pattern or order dictating which spy would be killed in a particular episode. A female "Gray Spy" occasionally appeared; unlike her two adversaries, she always prevailed.
Although Prohías eventually retired from doing the strip, "Spy vs. Spy" continued in newer hands. Various writers and artists worked on the strip in Prohias\' absence; since 1997 it has been done by Peter Kuper. The Morse Coded "by Prohias" remains in each strip\'s title, however, paying tribute to the originator.
Don Martin, billed as "Mad\'s Maddest Artist," drew gag cartoons, generally one page but sometimes longer, featuring lumpen characters with apparently hinged feet. Martin\'s absurd sight gags were frequently punctuated by an array of bizarre onomatopoeic sound effects such as GLORK, PATWANG-FWEEE, and GAZOWNT-GAZIKKA, coined by Martin himself (or ghost writer Don Edwing).
When Martin first joined Mad, he employed a nervous, scratchy art style, but this developed into a rounder, more cartoony look. Martin\'s wild physical comedy would eventually make him the signature artist of the magazine. Many of his cartoons used similar titles (e.g., "One Exceedingly Fine Day at the Beach"), and as this became a trademark, the titles sometimes became increasingly elaborate (e.g., "One Night in the Acme Ritz Central Arms Waldorf Plaza Statler Hilton Grand Hotel," "One Hot Sunny Afternoon in the Middle of the Ocean," or "One Fine Day at the Corner of South Finster Boulevard and Fonebone Street"). Mad has occasionally used the conceit for other cartoonists\' one-page gag titles.
However, Martin\'s 31-year association with Mad ended in some rancor over the ownership of his original artwork. Not long after leaving Mad, Martin ended up working at Mad\'s competitor Cracked, which, unlike Mad, allowed creators to keep their pages. After a few years, Martin also left Cracked and published a handful of issues of his own eponymous magazine.
Sergio Aragonés has written and drawn his "A Mad Look At..." feature for over forty years. He is known for his remarkable speed and cartooning facility. Aragonés\' Mad cartooning is notable for its silence. He uses virtually no words: speech balloons, when they occur at all, will merely feature a drawing of whatever is being discussed. Aragonés will periodically bend this rule for a store window sign, a stray "Gesundheit," or some other item necessary to the punchline.
In addition to his regular slot, Aragonés also provides the "Mad Marginals": tiny gag images that appear throughout the magazine in the corners, margins or spaces between panels. Aragonés debuted the feature in Mad #76 (January 1963), and it has appeared in every issue of the magazine since, except one (Aragonés missed Mad #111 after his mailed artwork was lost by the post office).
Beginning in Issue #30 (December 1956), Mad began printing jokes and random sayings in the margins of the magazine, based on a theme. In March 1958 (issue #38), this feature was given the overall title "Marginal Thinking Dept." Marginal Thinking continued to feature random topics (example: "Film Titles We\'d Like to See") until January 1963 (#76) when it became the permanent home of Aragonés\' "Drawn Out Dramas."
"Monroe" is an ongoing storyline about a prototypical, angst-filled, teenaged loser. It depicts his travails in school, his dysfunctional home and his unending troubles elsewhere. It is written by Anthony Barbieri, and was illustrated by Bill Wray from 1997-2006. It passed its 100th episode in 2005. Monroe is a gawky, ugly high schooler with extreme cowlicks that resemble bug-like antennae. The series has perplexed a handful of fans; an occasional "explanation" has been offered that \' Monroe\' is an open-ended parable of the 1905 Sino-Russian War, and if one reads it with that in mind, it all makes sense.
The previously black-and-white feature went on hiatus for much of 2006; when it returned, it was a color feature with artwork by Canadian artist Tom Fowler. Anthony Barbieri remains the writer.
A typical issue will include at least one full parody of a popular movie or television show. The titles are changed to create a play on words; for instance, "The Addams Family" became "The Adnauseum Family." The character names are generally switched in the same fashion.
These articles typically run five pages or more and are presented as a sequential storyline with caricatures and word balloons. The opening page or two-page splash usually consists of the cast of the show introducing themselves directly to the reader; in some parodies, the writers sometimes attempt to circumvent this convention by presenting the characters without such direct exposition. Many parodies end with the abrupt deus ex machina appearance of outside characters or pop culture figures who are similar in nature to the movie or TV series being parodied, or who comment satirically on the theme. For example, Dr. Phil arrives to counsel the psychologically damaged "Desperate Housewives", or the former cast of "Sex and the City" are hired as the new hookers for another HBO series, "Deadwood".
The parodies frequently make comedic use of the fourth wall, breaking character, and meta-references. Within an ostensibly self-contained storyline, the characters may refer to the technical aspects of filmmaking, the publicity, hype, or box office surrounding their project, their own past roles, any clichés being used, and so on.
Several show business stars have been quoted to the effect that the moment when they knew they\'d finally "made it" was when they saw themselves thus depicted in the pages of Mad. Over a hundred of them have posed for photographs which were printed in Mad\'s letters column, holding up the copy of the magazine they appeared in, and reacting in some comical way.
Several Mad premises have been successful enough to warrant additional installments, though not with the regularity of the above. Other recurring features which have appeared in Mad include:
Besides the above, Mad has returned to certain themes and areas again and again, such as fullblown imaginary magazines, greeting cards, nursery rhymes, Christmas carols, song parodies and other poetry (updating "Casey at the Bat" being a perennial favorite), comic strip takeoffs, and others.
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 question "What, me worry?" Mad first used the boy\'s face in November, 1954, on the cover of the comic book\'s first reprint collection, the Ballantine paperback titled The Mad Reader. His first Mad cover appearance was in miniature, amid the novelty products parodied on the front of issue #21 (March 1955). From #24 through #30, Neuman was a part of the ornate border design on each cover. His first iconic full-cover appearance --identified by name, and sporting his "What, me worry?" motto -- was as a supposed write-in candidate for the 1956 presidential election on the cover of issue #30.
The original image of an unnamed boy with a goofy gap-toothed grin was a popular humorous graphic for many decades before Mad adopted it. It had been used for all manner of purposes, from U.S. political campaigns to Nazi racial propaganda to advertisements for painless dentistry. Decades ago, the magazine was sued over the copyright to the image, but prevailed by producing similar ones predating the claimant\'s, dating back to the late 19th century.
Harvey Kurtzman first spotted the image on a postcard pinned to the bulletin board of Ballantine Books\' editor. "It was a face that didn\'t have a care in the world, except mischief," recalled Kurtzman. The name "Alfred E. Neuman" was derived from the 1940s radio show of comedian Henry Morgan, which included a running gag trumpeting the imminent arrival of Hollywood composer Alfred Newman, which was supposed to create intense excitement, after which Newman would appear for mere seconds, then vanish. According to Kurtzman, Morgan used "the name Alfred Newman for an innocuous character that you\'d forget in five minutes." Later, Morgan was a contributor to Mad.
The boy\'s face is now permanently associated with Mad. With the "What, me worry?" motto, Neuman has often appeared in political cartoons as a shorthand for unquestioning stupidity.
In recent years, Alfred E. Neuman\'s features have frequently been merged with those of George W. Bush by editorial cartoonists, including Mike Luckovich and Tom Tomorrow. The image has also appeared on magazine covers (notably The Nation) and in numerous Photoshop images and GIF files in which Neuman\'s face morphs into Bush\'s. A large Bush/Neuman poster was part of the Washington protests that accompanied Bush\'s 2001 inauguration. The alleged resemblance between the two has been noted more than once by Hillary Clinton. On July 10, 2005, speaking at the Aspen Institute\'s Ideas Festival, she said, "I sometimes feel that Alfred E. Neuman is in charge in Washington," referring to Bush\'s purported "What, me worry?" attitude.
In 1958, Mad published letters from several readers noting the resemblance between Neuman and England\'s Prince Charles, then nine years old."Letters Dept." Mad 38 (March 1958). Shortly thereafter, an angry letter under a Buckingham Palace letterhead arrived at the Mad offices: "Dear Sirs No it isn\'t a bit – not the least little bit like me. So jolly well stow it! See! Charles. P." The letter was authenticated as having been written on triple-cream laid royal stationery bearing an official copper-engraved crest. The postmark indicated it had been mailed from a post office within a short walking distance of Buckingham Palace. Unfortunately, the original disappeared years ago while on loan to another magazine and has never been recovered. Reidelbach, Maria. Completely Mad, pages 141 and 146. New York: Little Brown, 1991. ISBN 0-316-73890-5
For many years, Mad sold prints of the "official portrait" of Alfred E. Neuman through a small house ad on the letters page of the magazine (claiming that these prints were also useful for wrapping fish). In the early years the price was one for 25 cents; three for 50 cents; nine for a dollar; or 27 for two dollars. A female version of Alfred, named Moxie, appeared for a very brief time in the late 1950s.
Regular Mad readers have been treated to a large number of recurring in-jokes, including Neuman\'s catch phrase "What, me worry?" as well as such words as potrzebie, furshlugginer, veeblefetzer and axolotl, and humorous names such as Melvin, Bitsko, Kaputnik, Cowznofski, and Fonebone. Mad used the word "ecch" or its cousin "blecch" so often that even "The Simpsons" has made reference to it, showing Mad covers with the unseen parodies "Beauty and the Blecch" and "NYPD Blecch". In the 1950s, the magazine received a fee to promote the soft drink Moxie, and that product\'s logo would occasionally appear in illustrations. This experiment was an attempt by Feldstein to convince Gaines that the magazine could profit by carrying legitimate advertising.
The word "hoohah" was a running gag in the early years of Mad, often exclaimed by characters in the comic book issues written and edited by Harvey Kurtzman. Its somewhat Eastern European feel was a perfect fit for the New York Jewish style of the magazine. Kurtzman liked using Yiddish expressions and nonsense words to humorous effect, and the very first story in the first issue of Mad was even titled "Hoohah!" The word\'s precise origin is unknown, although it may have sprung from the Hungarian word for "wow," which is hűha [1]). "It\'s crackers to slip a rozzer the dropsy in snide" was a non sequitur-ish phrase that found its way into Mad on several occasions in the 1950s; this is somewhat dated British slang meaning "it is foolhardy to bribe a policeman with counterfeit money." While associated with Mad, the quote originated in Margery Allingham\'s novel, The Fashion in Shrouds.
Many of the magazine\'s visual elements are sheer whimsy, and frequently appear in the artwork without context or explanation. Among these are a potted avocado plant named Arthur (rumored to be based on art director John Putnam\'s marijuana plant); a domed trashcan wearing an overcoat, the Mad Zeppelin (which more closely resembles an elongated hot air balloon); and an emaciated long-beaked creature who went unidentified for decades before being dubbed "Flip the Bird." In late 1964, Mad was tricked into purchasing the "rights" to an optical illusion in the public domain, featuring a sort of three-pronged tuning fork whose appearance defies physics. The magazine dubbed it the Mad poiuyt after the six rightmost letter keys on a QWERTY keyboard in reverse order, not realizing that the existing image was already known to engineers and usually called a blivet.
Mad cartoonists have regularly drawn caricatures of themselves, other contributors and the editors into the articles, most famously the character Roger Kaputnik in "The Lighter Side Of...", who was drawn to resemble Dave Berg. Al Jaffee sometimes incorporated a self-caricature into his signature. The magazine\'s photo spreads have typically featured the same Mad staffers. Originally, the magazine tried hiring models for its photo shoots, but found that many were unwilling to make the ridiculous faces the magazine wanted. When the staff tried to prompt the reluctant outsiders, they soon found that they were better suited for shameless posing (and more cost-effective) than the professionals were.
More recently, the magazine has made periodic references to "the monkey juice," generally in the context of overimbibing with same. The editors continue to punctuate letter column responses with the breezy interjection "Fa fa fa!" There have also been a number of recurring semi-characters within the editorial pages, such as Hans Brickface, who values items sent in by readers, and Godfrey, who was supposedly the magazine\'s head intern.
The mysterious name "Max Korn" has popped up for years; reader requests to clarify Korn\'s true identity have been greeted with increasingly outlandish explanations.
Mad has provided an ongoing showcase for many of the best 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. 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." Artist Greg Theakston remembered, "nothing was better than Bill Gaines delivering a check, via the editor, ink still wet."
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 Paris, Kenya, Leningrad, Hong Kong, Monte Carlo, Athens, London, Amsterdam, Tahiti, Morocco, Venice, Greece, Germany, and more.
Although Mad was an exclusively freelance publication, it achieved a remarkable stability, with numerous contributors remaining prominent for decades. 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. It appears to be largely a function of when the reader first encountered Mad. Like Saturday Night Live or The Simpsons, proclaiming the precise moment that kicked off the irreversible decline has long been sport.
Mad poked fun at this dynamic in its "Untold History of Mad Magazine," a self-referential faux history in the 400th issue. According to the Untold History:
Among the most frequently-cited "downward turning points" are: creator/editor Harvey Kurtzman\'s departure in 1957; the magazine\'s mainstream success; adoption of recurring features starting in the early 1960s; the magazine\'s absorption into a more corporate structure in 1968 (or the mid-1990s); founder Gaines\' death in 1992; the magazine\'s publicized "revamp" in 1997; or the arrival of paid advertising in 2001. Mad has been criticized for its overreliance on a core group of aging regulars throughout the 1970s and 1980s and then criticized again 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. Also, Mad focuses greatly on current events and a changing popular culture. A reader born in 1980, who takes to Mad in 1995, might look back ten years from 2005 and, comparing an issue from each year, decide that the magazine isn\'t as good as it once was. However, that same reader might fail to appreciate the humor or references in a 1985 or 1975 issue, although the magazine would logically have been superior at that point to its later "slump."
Mad\'s sales peak was in the 1970s, but its critical heyday is in the eyes of its beholders. The magazine\'s art director, Sam Viviano, has suggested that historically, Mad was at its best "whenever you first started reading it."
The loudest among those who insist the magazine is no longer funny are typically supporters of Harvey Kurtzman, who had the good critical fortune to leave Mad after just 28 issues, before his own formulaic tendencies became oppressive. This also meant Kurtzman suffered the bad financial timing of departing before the magazine became a runaway success. However, just how much of that success was due to the original Kurtzman template he left for his successor, and how much can be credited to the Al Feldstein system and the depth of the post-Kurtzman talent pool, can be argued without resolution.
Judging from Kurtzman\'s final two-plus years at EC, during which Mad appeared erratically (ten issues appeared in 1954, followed by eight issues in 1955 and four issues in 1956), it seems clear that he was ill-suited to the job of producing the magazine on a regular schedule. It seems equally clear that Feldstein\'s abilities were more workmanlike and reliable than the inimitable genius of Kurtzman. 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 slowing, retiring or dying in the 1980s; although the magazine had always been open to new talent in theory, the influx increased from this stage onward. Newer contributors include Anthony Barbieri, Scott Bricher, Tom Bunk, John Caldwell, Desmond Devlin, Drew Friedman, Jeff Kruse, Barry Liebmann, Kevin Pope, Scott Maiko, Hermann Mejia, Tom Richmond, Andrew J. Schwartzberg, Mike Snider, Greg Theakston, Rick Tulka, and Bill Wray.
On April 1, 1997, the magazine publicized an alleged makeover, ostensibly designed to reach an older, more sophisticated readership. However, Salon \'s David Futrelle pointed out that such content was very much a part of Mad\'s past:
In recent years, Mad has continued to receive complaints from fans and foes alike, sometimes over its perceived failings, sometimes because of controversial content, but generally over its decision to accept advertising. These accusers sometimes invoke the late publisher Bill Gaines, asserting that he would "turn over in his grave" if he knew of the magazine\'s sellout. The editors have a ready answer, pointing out that such protests are completely invalid because Gaines was cremated.
Over the years, Mad has branched out from print into other media. During the Gaines years, the publisher had an aversion to milking 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), a small ceramic Alfred E. Neuman bust, and a picture of Neuman, suitable for framing, that was for decades regularly advertised on the letters page 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.
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[2]; 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 33rpm record. Two additional albums of novelty songs were released 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" (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). Also in 1996, Rhino Records compiled a number of Mad-recorded tracks as Mad Grooves.[3]
A successful off-Broadway production, "The Mad Show," was staged in 1966, featuring sketches written by Mad personnel (as well as an uncredited assist by Stephen Sondheim). A cast album was released, and is now available on CD.
In 1979, a very successful board game was released. 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.
Also in 1980, following the success of the National Lampoon-backed Animal House, Mad lent its name to a similar 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. 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.
An early 1970s Mad television pilot was not picked up. But, a sketch TV show was introduced in 1995 using the magazine\'s logo and characters: MADtv, which aired comedy segments in a fashion similar to Saturday Night Live and SCTV. However, there is no editorial connection between the sketch comedy series and the magazine, which are unrelated in style. Don Martin\'s cartoon characters were animated as bumpers. The characters from "Spy vs. Spy" were also animated on MADtv and, more recently, in TV ads for Mountain Dew soda.
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.
In 1996, with issue #350, Mad included a CD-ROM featuring Mad-related software as well as three audio files (as noted above). Although the audio files could be played on any computer, the remainder of the disc was compatible only with Microsoft Windows, resulting in some criticism.[4]
In 1999, Broderbund Software/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 special issues as well as audio files of most of the recorded inserts from various special issues, thus becoming one of only a few mass magazines (such as National Geographic and The New Yorker) to have attempted this type of comprehensive archival release in digital form. The seven discs of Totally Mad were divided chronologically, from "The Earliest Years: 1952-1960" and "The Early Years, but Not the Earliest: 1961-1968" through "The RELATIVELY Late, but not as Late as, the Latest Years: 1988-1994" and "The Latest Years: 1995-1998." The product\'s "Totally" claim was misleading, since 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." Some of this deleted material can be viewed at "Articles Mysteriously Missing from the Totally Mad CD ROM". The set is now out of print and is no longer supported by either Broderbund or The Learning Company.
In 2006, the DVD-ROM Absolutely Mad was released by digital publisher Graphic Imaging Technology, effectively updating the original Totally Mad content through 2005. A single seven-gigabyte disc, it comprises more than 600 issues including the magazine\'s specials; the newer collection is, however, also missing the disputed material deleted from Totally Mad. It differs from the earlier release in that it is both Microsoft Windows and Macintosh compatible, with all the printed content is in PDF format which can be read on any platform for which a PDF viewer is available, whereas Totally Mad had used a special viewer program that was compatible only with Microsoft Windows. Absolutely Mad also includes numerous video clips including interviews with the editorial staff, several Spy vs. Spy segments from MADtv and the Spy vs. Spy Mountain Dew commercials. Missing from this version of the release are the audio music files that were included with Totally Mad. In addition, although the packaging for the box indicates that the cover art from the many Mad paperback releases would the included, this content is not present on the DVD.
Beginning in 1955, William M. Gaines began presenting reprints of material for Mad in black-and-white paperbacks, the first being The Mad Reader. 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, which later became the Super-Specials. These reprint issues were sometimes augmented by exclusive features such as posters, stickers and, on a few occasions, recordings on flexi-disc and comic-book formatted inserts reprinting material from the comic book era of the magazine.
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), Brazil (33 years and counting), and the Netherlands (32 years) have produced the longest uninterrupted Mad variants.
Some of the foreign editions have spoofed material that is completely unfamiliar to American audiences, or is not in keeping with Mad\'s general avoidance of obscenity (for an example of both, see the Swedish Mad parody of Fucking Åmål (known in English-speaking countries as Show Me Love [6]).
Mad has had many imitators through the years. The three most durable of these were Cracked, Sick, and Crazy.
Others were short-lived exercises. 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 cancelled after an issue or two. Many of these titles appeared in the mid-to-late 1950s, when Mad\'s success was in its first flower, but as the decades went by, more knockoffs surfaced and vanished, with titles such as Wild, Blast, Grin, and Gag!
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 E.C. Comics joined the parade with a sister humor magazine, Panic, produced by future Mad editor Al Feldstein.
In 1967, Marvel Comics produced the first of thirteen 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 1973–1976, DC Comics published Plop! which featured Mad stalwart Sergio Aragones and frequent cover art by Basil Wolverton, but was less slavish in its Mad mimickry, relying more on one-page gags and horror-based comedy. A magazine from the 1970s, Parody, focused on TV and movie spoofs. There was even a Christian imitation of Mad – Glad, a born again version that followed the same format, except that the TV, film and social parodies were vehicles toward conveying Bible-based messages.
But, as it carries on past its 50th year, Mad has outlasted them all.
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 Magazine, and The Onion. However, these titles had their own distinct editorial approach and thus cannot
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