Ceasing publication, according to multiple sources, though the magazine hasn’t said anything yet.
Man.
My brother – who is 13 years older than I am – started out as a paperboy for the local newsstand when he was in 2nd grade in 1960. He bought MAD Magazine every month, as he worked at the newsstand through high school.
When I was old enough to read in the late 1970s and early 1980s, there was this treasure trove of the entire 1960s run of MAD Magazine waiting for me, along with a bunch of book collections too.
I grew up on MAD. I learned pop culture references there. I learned history references there. Years later in high school and college, learning about the Cold War, I felt like the pages of MAD helped me kind of have this living satirical chronicle of it all. Names clicked into place; I knew Everett Dirksen, Dean Rusk, Adam Clayton Powell and others because of MAD. Movies – Sleazy Rider, The Sound of Money, Who in Heck is Virginia Woolf, Guess Who’s Throwing Up Dinner – I knew 'em all years before I’d see them, thanks to MAD.
RIP, but man what a great thing those magazines were. I’ll forever cherish that gift of having that collection around.
So many great artists back in the day. Antonio Prohias, who created the brilliant Spy vs Spy…Sergio Aragones…Don Martin…Dave Berg…Mort Drucker…Al Jaffee…such a bummer.
I guess I always expected there’d be a usual gang of idiots keeping that thing running.
I loved Mad Magazine! And Cracked too. Picking up those magazines, along with Richie Rich comic books, was a huge part of my childhood trips to visit my grandparents in Cape Cod every summer. Their spoofs of the latest TV shows and movies were as important to me as the latest TV shows and movies.
I suppose Mayor Pete put the nail in their coffin when he said “I guess it’s a generational thing.”
Well, it was a hell of a run. One of the first genuinely mature discussions I ever had with my dad was about Mad Magazine, some years after I’d stopped reading it. He saw dumb, unedifying cartoons and infantile humor, and I saw generations of kids being introduced to satire and critical thinking, sold with gross-out jokes about boogers. Heck, my first encounter with the concept of the class system was in Mad.
MAD and Arte Johnson in the same day - the fixtures of my youth are vanishing one by one!
To be very serious about something very silly, MAD was one of the most important American magazines of the 20th century. It had a vast effect on both the popular culture and the general mindset of a couple generations. Pretty much every major talent involved in American comedy from the late 60s to the late 90s was weaned on it. And as triggercut suggests, it exposed its (mostly youthful) readers to all kinds of political and cultural ideas you wouldn’t expect from a magazine aimed at adolescent boys. Growing up reading it in the 70s, I was exposed to plenty of bathroom humor, sexual innuendo, weird Don Martin sound effects and goofy Sergio Aragones doodles … and also lots of pointed commentary on racism, the environment, the sexual revolution, and politics.
Some of my earliest experiences with cognitive dissonance as a kid were with MAD magazine - wanting to see what the back cover fold-in, but also wanting to not crease the back cover, keep it pristine.
I’ve posted the story about my visit to the MAD offices a couple of times, so I won’t repeat it here. Instead I’ll just post my sadness at MAD going the way of the flexi-disc and leave you with this.
Dystopic, but true. Sad to see MAD go, I hadn’t kept up with the gang of idiots but I enjoyed the magazine immensely as a kid. Still keep my “Completely MAD” book on the shelf.
Certainly possible the takeover had something to do with it…
…though it is also equally likely that after the takeover AT&T looked at DC’s accounting and made a business decision. MAD was never not-for-profit…at least explicitly. :)
Oh man I actually saw a MAD magazine on a shelf just yesterday. I was shocked they still printed it. Guess I’m not shocked about this?
My only fond memories of Mad are the Spy vs Spy game for NES, which I had so I forced myself to play it, and Mad TV. Still it’s sad to see something you remember from childhood die. It’s like, the relentless march of time that reinforces your inevitable death. So in that sense it’s kind of a bummer.
Live every day like there’s no tomorrow friends. But don’t go crazy. You’ll likely have a tomorrow and may regret some things.
