8 ms·

Mad Magazine to mostly stop publishing new material

126 points by elsewhen 7y ago

RappingBoomer 7y ago
what, me worry?
JohnJamesRambo 7y ago
The joy of childhood me sitting down with an issue of Mad Magazine is unquantifiable. Such great memories reading that hilarious magazine.
Razengan 7y ago
Words like Potrzebie and Furshlugginer will forever be stuck in my head.
- Krustopolis 7y ago
  Don't forget "Poit!"
  - mirimir 7y ago
    ... and "you can't train nose hairs".
- jcl 7y ago
  A surprising CS connection: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potrzebie#System_of_measurement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potrzebie#System_of_measuremen...
golem14 7y ago
Sad. I’d love to get a complete collection of the German translation (which was as least as awesome as the american version). Anyone know whether this exists ? You could buy the entire US collection on CD for ≈$40 a while back (still can: https://www.amazon.com/Absolutely-MAD-Magazine-50-Years/dp/B000HKMQ64 https://www.amazon.com/Absolutely-MAD-Magazine-50-Years/dp/B...)
Pfhreak 7y ago
It seems to me that MAD was an older generation's magazine that didn't do a good job pivoting to a new audience. Looking at the cover in the link, it already feels 30 years old. (The characteristic MAD face evokes old-timey Americana in a way that feels nostalgic more than current.)
- justinator 7y ago
  Well, there was Mad TV.
  - tonystubblebine 7y ago
    Right. It was great and more forward looking than SNL.
  - dillonmckay 7y ago
    I have much fonder memories of the magazine.
- taurath 7y ago
  Sometimes it’s just time. I’d rather a brand stay in lockstep with a generation and step aside as it generation does. This never ending desire for growth, “reimagining”, and immortality is not serving people well.
- ojbyrne 7y ago
  Honestly I'm nearly 60, and I never liked Mad. It felt juvenile when I was 12.
  - raverbashing 7y ago
    Oh it definitely is But you know what? Life is not meant to be serious all the time
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
Fricken 7y ago
I inherited my Dad's Mad magazines which covered the mid 60s to the early 70s, and my Uncle's, which covered the early 70s to the early 80s, and my collection, which began in 1984 and ran to 1993. I read them all over and over. I learned about the world through the spectre of Mad, it was my primary education. Of course, it ain't what it used to be and hasn't been for a long time, so I guess I'm not that sad to see it go. It was a different era.
- kstrauser 7y ago
  Same. It's not exaggerating to say that it taught me a healthy distrust of authority and corporate America. RIP, gang. You showed me a great many new ideas.
  - klenwell 7y ago
    Also gave Donald Knuth his first big break: > At age 19, Dr. Knuth published his first technical paper, “The Potrzebie System of Weights and Measures,” in Mad magazine. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/17/science/donald-knuth-computers-algorithms-programming.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/17/science/donald-knuth-comp... I shudder to think where computer science would be today were it not for the sage foresight and mature discrimination of Mad magazine.
- knopkop_ 7y ago
  I inherited a pile of Mad magazines as a kid in South Africa. Some of the content was confusing to me as I had little concept of some US terms, i.e. I had no idea which season 'Fall' is, or that a character complains about the temperature being in the eighties (celcius vs fahrenheit). Just yesterday I recalled an old joke in an old copy of Mad. It was a top ten list of songs that are about violence. One of the songs listed was Sting and the Police, "Don't stab so close to me". Still laughing about that now.
jedberg 7y ago
This reminded me of my love of Spy vs Spy, and I found a free archive! https://archive.org/details/SpyVsSpyTheCompleteCasebook https://archive.org/details/SpyVsSpyTheCompleteCasebook
- kstrauser 7y ago
  OMG thank you.
- taneq 7y ago
  That is brilliant! Thank you!
- irrational 7y ago
  No way! That is amazing!
- GrumpyNl 7y ago
  Thanks a lot, love them.
taneq 7y ago
Spy vs. Spy will never die.
godzillabrennus 7y ago
It’s too bad that they never transitioned into newer forms of media to capture their demographic as the internet took hold. I remember them as a teen in the 90’s and they still had a captive audience in my peers and I. After the mobile computing revolution had taken hold I don’t think teens even were aware they existed.
- bsder 7y ago
  Has any once-successful print media actually pivoted and been equally as successful? I can't actually think of one.
  - vmlinuz 7y ago
    The Onion, maybe?
  - tokai 7y ago
    All the large scientific publishers have won on the shift from print to digital.
  - 52-6F-62 7y ago
    NYT has done quite well for itself. And you have one of their former developers (Mike Bostock) for a number of the most popular web libraries over the past 8-10 years or so.
    - bsder 7y ago
      Has it? Is it pulling in the same money as when it was a print juggernaut? This seems to suggest "not really": https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/NYT/new-york-times/revenue https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/NYT/new-york-times...
      - 52-6F-62 7y ago
        I'd say yes. That chart suggested that the times revenue has seen YOY increases every year since 2016. Also, it really depends on your definition of success. https://www.statista.com/chart/3755/digital-subscribers-of-the-new-york-times/ https://www.statista.com/chart/3755/digital-subscribers-of-t... (of course, take this as you will: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/06/business/media/new-york-times-earnings-digital-subscriptions.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/06/business/media/new-york-t...)
andrewstuart 7y ago
The surprising thing is that it was still going.
dredmorbius 7y ago
See also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20351568 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20351568
dang 7y ago
Url changed from https://comicbook.com/dc/2019/07/04/mad-magazine-to-cease-publication/ https://comicbook.com/dc/2019/07/04/mad-magazine-to-cease-pu..., which points to this.
cybersnowflake 7y ago
Its a different world. Comedy will belong to those who have the bravery to make fun of today's sacred cows not yesterday's. Mad was built on parodying a Middle American mindset that largely doesn't exist anymore. Thanks in small part to counterculture such as it self. In a way its a victim of its own success. It tore down the enemy too well and the counterculture is 'the Man' now. You can see the same thing happening with the Simpsons. Its lost its purpose. On another note, I'm not going to pretend that simply being left leaning doomed Mad but there are already a gajillion places simply making fun of Drumpf and Republicans. Gotta stand out somehow.
- jtx22 7y ago
  Show some respect for the President.
- taurath 7y ago
  Not to veer wildly into politics, but the gajillion places making fun of the right seem to be much less effectual than in the past. The ubiquitousness of the conversation centering around them seems to be getting coopted as an advantage. It’s “no press is bad press” on cocaine and I’m really curious when the societal antibodies are going to kick in, if they exist. I’m trying to think of the punch that’s landed the hardest and actually caused damage, and I’m coming up short. I’m not saying this as a partisan or political argument, but I’m genuinely curious about the sociological implications. It’s a very... strange puzzle to me, and I’d welcome some fresh perspectives.
  - asark 7y ago
    > I’m trying to think of the punch that’s landed the hardest and actually caused damage, and I’m coming up short. SNL's Palin parodies? Not sure whether that actually mattered or the Republicans just, for unrelated reasons, failed to GOTV. I'm pretty sure most self-identified Republicans still think she's great and weren't turned away from the polls over her, but maybe it swayed some moderate/no-party-affiliation folks? Beyond that, humor's kinda a sustaining force for the left, in the same way... whatever you'd call Talk Radio style entertainment-news is for the right (AM radio, various web shows and podcasts, Fox News). Its efficacy may be more in group cohesion than converting "others". [EDIT] incidentally, SNL probably played a large part in painting the (fairly negative) pop-culture image of Hillary that was such an important part of the 2016 election, overshadowing the whole race. Think mid- to late-Clinton-presidency SNL. So there's that.
gHosts 7y ago
It's finally happened. Satire can no longer compete with reality.
Digory 7y ago
Haha. Someone killed a "what, me worry?" comment. Guess that shows how little Mad impacted the next generation.
- dang 7y ago
  That was killed by software. HN has many software filters, most of which are based on past activities by spammers or trolls. Moderators review most such posts and unkill the legit comments, but users can also unkill them by vouching for them. To do that, click on the comment's timestamp to go to its page, then click 'vouch' at the top. (There's a small karma threshold, currently 30, before an account can do that.)
pg_bot 7y ago
I'll miss Mad, it's what I read as a kid waiting to get my hair cut. If you knew how the magazine was produced you could sense this day was coming. They are legendary for having staff members with 30-50 year careers. For example the guy who does the fold-ins, (every one of them has been made by one guy - Al Jaffee) is 98 and has been with the magazine for 64 years. The young guys in the office are likely in their 60's. Combine that with the decline in print media in general and I don't see a reasonable way to continue production.
- thinkingkong 7y ago
  Al Jaffee also wrote all the “snappy answers to stupid questions” which is basically a bible for funny. If you havent had the chance to read them Id highly suggest it.
  - mynameishere 7y ago
    A bible for grinding a bit into the ground over decades. The book version of those had little blank templates so the reader could write his own "Snappy Answers". Why the hell not? I think Homer's were as good as any: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vb3aDRoO8Sw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vb3aDRoO8Sw ...I guess I'm a downer. Did you know Chevy Chase wrote gags for MAD? They had a lot of outside writers like that. Even Don Martin (whose cartoons seemed pretty straightforward, even if he was the "maddest") used writers for jokes.
- Stratoscope 7y ago
  Al Jaffee is still there? That is (or was?) awesome. I was a fan of his when I was a kid in the late 1950s.
  - milquetoastaf 7y ago
    He still makes fold-ins for every issue!
    - vermontdevil 7y ago
gitgud 7y ago
> "When political humor seemed to work, MAD doubled down on lampooning the Trump administration, which earned some critical praise but likely alienated conservative readers as well as putting the magazine in direct competitions with late night shows that were delivering content nightly" This is so sad to see. The fact that they took the easy road of Trump jokes, is far from the magazine I once knew. They used to have witty images and commentary that would appeal to many...
TunnelTheMole 7y ago
As a 63yr.old, I have nothing but admiration and adoration for the staff, the magazine and the quick quips that remain with me. Nary a day goes by that my internal dialogue doesn't reference some part of MAD's escapes from the staid. As a child ( one of 5 siblings), Saturdays were spent going to and from dreary piano & theory lessons in St.Louis (pre-interstate and daylight savings time equaled a 2&1/2 hour ride, one way). Each of us usually had several hours in the city to "kill", wandering around the Woolworths and surrounding locale of Clayton, MO. MAD made the 2&1/2 hours home sandwiched inside the station wagon seem like my escape: the humour and wit between the pages, the cartoons & charactitures(sic?) hidden between the 'departments', and the political (sub)commentary relentlessly and endlessly amused me. I, too, read the issues from cover to cover, over and over..."Believe it or nuts", my heart mourns in its memory and mourns MAD's memorialized messages. RIP, Alfred E. Neumann! May you live forever in our minds and memories!
- sizzzzlerz 7y ago
  We're nearly the same age and I, too, was a huge fan of Mad during it's hey-days years in the 60s. I especially loved the satirization of current TV shows but what made the magazine so delicious was that our parents hated it (albeit, let us read it, anyway) and it was considered to be subversive by adults. How could it not be successful? I haven't read it in decades but it is a fond memory of my youth.
- pjmorris 7y ago
  I'm less than a decade behind you, but I share your appreciation. Just yesterday I was reminded of a joke from Mad that meant a lot to my entire family (I was the first, and most thorough, reader of each new issue, but everyone else sampled from it as well.) The appearance of a new issue at the grocery store was cause for celebration.
drmpeg 7y ago
My brother used to let me read Mad Magazine out loud to test my just learned reading skills when I was in 1st grade (circa 1963). One time, I pronounced a word as "eye-doyt". My brother knew that wasn't a word and had to look at the page. The word was actually "idiot".
ptah 7y ago
possibly as real life has become the same as the contents of mad? :)
tannhaeuser 7y ago
While I'm not sure why Mad will cease publishing exactly, I'm wondering what we can do to keep weird and edgy stuff afloat. Millenials and up are really missing out badly, and I'm blaming WWW economics as they have developed, along with the monopolistic sales channels and our reluctance to buy any online publication at all. Mad is even pretty mild/mainstream compared to the stuff we had in the 90s (in Germany at least). What option does an author/artist have today to make a buck with his works? Wasn't the WWW supposed to enable easy publishing for everybody?
- dillonmckay 7y ago
  Look what happened to ‘Cracked’, both offline and online.
acomjean 7y ago
Gothamist had some decent articles / videos on mad recently. Including one on Al Jafffee who did the folding back page. They’re short and pretty interesting. https://gothamist.com/2016/05/18/mad_magazine_video_tour.php https://gothamist.com/2016/05/18/mad_magazine_video_tour.php Al Jaffee interview: https://gothamist.com/2016/05/05/al_jaffee_mad_magazine.php https://gothamist.com/2016/05/05/al_jaffee_mad_magazine.php
drawkbox 7y ago
MAD helped the world learn to laugh at itself, including comedic cynicism and sarcasm with top notch satire aimed at everyone including themselves at MAD. MAD inspired all types of comedy from many greats today. Terry Gilliam called MAD's Harvey Kurtzman his mentor [1]. Judd Apatow says similar. It inspired Cracked, National Lampoon and many other comedy media. MAD was even partially responsible for the counter culture [2]. The re-launch I think wasn't truly the MAD spirit but I was hopeful for it continuing, always a subscriber. MAD didn't transition well after the internet, even though they were like a pre-internet must see destination. After 2000 they held under 250k subscribers [3]. I'll miss dearly new content from Alfred E. Neuman and the 'usual gang of idiots' for sure, but we'll always have MAD history. MAD will forever have changed the world and comedy for the better. The world could use more MAD satire today so it is sad to see it go. [1] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/5756899/My-MAD-mentor-Terry-Gilliam-on-Harvey-Kurtzman.html https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/5756899/My-MAD-men... [2] https://groovyhistory.com/mad-magazine-covers-1960s https://groovyhistory.com/mad-magazine-covers-1960s [3] https://blog.comichron.com/2019/07/the-complete-mad-magazine-sales-history.html https://blog.comichron.com/2019/07/the-complete-mad-magazine...
acomjean 7y ago
Because you need to see all the mad covers: (in 90s html, but it’s static so fast) https://www.madcoversite.com/covers.html https://www.madcoversite.com/covers.html
jccalhoun 7y ago
When they relaunched a year or two ago I tried to find an issue to buy. I went to the local chain bookstore, a couple supermarkets, and Walmart and couldn't find it. I didn't know if that was because none of those places had ordered it or if it was already sold out. Since then I have picked up a couple issues and found them to be pretty good. Sad to see them coming to an end.
sequoia 7y ago
I love mad magazine despite being born in the 1980s–I bought old copies from comic shops and the paperbacks were easy to find at used book stores. I even bought the cd-rom box-set with the entire archives at one point! My kids now read my old mad books and magazines. That said, I think it's good that they're packing it in. All good things must end some day, and Mad Magazine has been past its prime for some time now. As other commenters suggest, the context in which Mad was revolutionary & cutting has long past & its style of irreverence is now almost ubiquitous. But I can't say I won't miss the furshlugginer thing!
Razengan 7y ago
Speaking of Spy vs Spy, I have always wanted a modern game with the same mechanics as the Commodore 64 trilogy; players running around setting up comic traps against each other. Would make for some great couch multiplayer, especially on the Nintendo Switch! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yu2e866bEcM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yu2e866bEcM
emeryberger 7y ago
Shannon Wheeler shared this really excellent round up of Mad's decline written by Tom Richmond, a long-time MAD Magazine contributor. https://www.tomrichmond.com/the-end-of-the-madness/04/07/2019/ https://www.tomrichmond.com/the-end-of-the-madness/04/07/201...

126 points by elsewhen 7y ago

what, me worry?

The joy of childhood me sitting down with an issue of Mad Magazine is unquantifiable. Such great memories reading that hilarious magazine.

Razengan 7y ago

Words like Potrzebie and Furshlugginer will forever be stuck in my head.

Krustopolis 7y ago
Don't forget "Poit!"
- mirimir 7y ago
  ... and "you can't train nose hairs".
jcl 7y ago
A surprising CS connection: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potrzebie#System_of_measurement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potrzebie#System_of_measuremen...

golem14 7y ago

Sad. I’d love to get a complete collection of the German translation (which was as least as awesome as the american version). Anyone know whether this exists ? You could buy the entire US collection on CD for ≈$40 a while back (still can: https://www.amazon.com/Absolutely-MAD-Magazine-50-Years/dp/B000HKMQ64 https://www.amazon.com/Absolutely-MAD-Magazine-50-Years/dp/B...)

Pfhreak 7y ago

It seems to me that MAD was an older generation's magazine that didn't do a good job pivoting to a new audience. Looking at the cover in the link, it already feels 30 years old. (The characteristic MAD face evokes old-timey Americana in a way that feels nostalgic more than current.)

justinator 7y ago
Well, there was Mad TV.
- tonystubblebine 7y ago
  Right. It was great and more forward looking than SNL.
- dillonmckay 7y ago
  I have much fonder memories of the magazine.
taurath 7y ago
Sometimes it’s just time. I’d rather a brand stay in lockstep with a generation and step aside as it generation does. This never ending desire for growth, “reimagining”, and immortality is not serving people well.
ojbyrne 7y ago
Honestly I'm nearly 60, and I never liked Mad. It felt juvenile when I was 12.
- raverbashing 7y ago
  Oh it definitely is But you know what? Life is not meant to be serious all the time
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]

Fricken 7y ago

I inherited my Dad's Mad magazines which covered the mid 60s to the early 70s, and my Uncle's, which covered the early 70s to the early 80s, and my collection, which began in 1984 and ran to 1993. I read them all over and over. I learned about the world through the spectre of Mad, it was my primary education. Of course, it ain't what it used to be and hasn't been for a long time, so I guess I'm not that sad to see it go. It was a different era.

kstrauser 7y ago
Same. It's not exaggerating to say that it taught me a healthy distrust of authority and corporate America. RIP, gang. You showed me a great many new ideas.
- klenwell 7y ago
  Also gave Donald Knuth his first big break: > At age 19, Dr. Knuth published his first technical paper, “The Potrzebie System of Weights and Measures,” in Mad magazine. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/17/science/donald-knuth-computers-algorithms-programming.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/17/science/donald-knuth-comp... I shudder to think where computer science would be today were it not for the sage foresight and mature discrimination of Mad magazine.
knopkop_ 7y ago
I inherited a pile of Mad magazines as a kid in South Africa. Some of the content was confusing to me as I had little concept of some US terms, i.e. I had no idea which season 'Fall' is, or that a character complains about the temperature being in the eighties (celcius vs fahrenheit). Just yesterday I recalled an old joke in an old copy of Mad. It was a top ten list of songs that are about violence. One of the songs listed was Sting and the Police, "Don't stab so close to me". Still laughing about that now.

jedberg 7y ago

This reminded me of my love of Spy vs Spy, and I found a free archive! https://archive.org/details/SpyVsSpyTheCompleteCasebook https://archive.org/details/SpyVsSpyTheCompleteCasebook

kstrauser 7y ago
OMG thank you.
taneq 7y ago
That is brilliant! Thank you!
irrational 7y ago
No way! That is amazing!
GrumpyNl 7y ago
Thanks a lot, love them.

taneq 7y ago

Spy vs. Spy will never die.

godzillabrennus 7y ago

It’s too bad that they never transitioned into newer forms of media to capture their demographic as the internet took hold. I remember them as a teen in the 90’s and they still had a captive audience in my peers and I. After the mobile computing revolution had taken hold I don’t think teens even were aware they existed.

bsder 7y ago
Has any once-successful print media actually pivoted and been equally as successful? I can't actually think of one.
- vmlinuz 7y ago
  The Onion, maybe?
- tokai 7y ago
  All the large scientific publishers have won on the shift from print to digital.
- 52-6F-62 7y ago
  NYT has done quite well for itself. And you have one of their former developers (Mike Bostock) for a number of the most popular web libraries over the past 8-10 years or so.
  - bsder 7y ago
    Has it? Is it pulling in the same money as when it was a print juggernaut? This seems to suggest "not really": https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/NYT/new-york-times/revenue https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/NYT/new-york-times...
    - 52-6F-62 7y ago
      I'd say yes. That chart suggested that the times revenue has seen YOY increases every year since 2016. Also, it really depends on your definition of success. https://www.statista.com/chart/3755/digital-subscribers-of-the-new-york-times/ https://www.statista.com/chart/3755/digital-subscribers-of-t... (of course, take this as you will: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/06/business/media/new-york-times-earnings-digital-subscriptions.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/06/business/media/new-york-t...)

andrewstuart 7y ago

The surprising thing is that it was still going.

dredmorbius 7y ago

See also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20351568 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20351568

dang 7y ago

Url changed from https://comicbook.com/dc/2019/07/04/mad-magazine-to-cease-publication/ https://comicbook.com/dc/2019/07/04/mad-magazine-to-cease-pu..., which points to this.

cybersnowflake 7y ago

Its a different world. Comedy will belong to those who have the bravery to make fun of today's sacred cows not yesterday's. Mad was built on parodying a Middle American mindset that largely doesn't exist anymore. Thanks in small part to counterculture such as it self. In a way its a victim of its own success. It tore down the enemy too well and the counterculture is 'the Man' now. You can see the same thing happening with the Simpsons. Its lost its purpose. On another note, I'm not going to pretend that simply being left leaning doomed Mad but there are already a gajillion places simply making fun of Drumpf and Republicans. Gotta stand out somehow.

jtx22 7y ago
Show some respect for the President.
taurath 7y ago
Not to veer wildly into politics, but the gajillion places making fun of the right seem to be much less effectual than in the past. The ubiquitousness of the conversation centering around them seems to be getting coopted as an advantage. It’s “no press is bad press” on cocaine and I’m really curious when the societal antibodies are going to kick in, if they exist. I’m trying to think of the punch that’s landed the hardest and actually caused damage, and I’m coming up short. I’m not saying this as a partisan or political argument, but I’m genuinely curious about the sociological implications. It’s a very... strange puzzle to me, and I’d welcome some fresh perspectives.
- asark 7y ago
  > I’m trying to think of the punch that’s landed the hardest and actually caused damage, and I’m coming up short. SNL's Palin parodies? Not sure whether that actually mattered or the Republicans just, for unrelated reasons, failed to GOTV. I'm pretty sure most self-identified Republicans still think she's great and weren't turned away from the polls over her, but maybe it swayed some moderate/no-party-affiliation folks? Beyond that, humor's kinda a sustaining force for the left, in the same way... whatever you'd call Talk Radio style entertainment-news is for the right (AM radio, various web shows and podcasts, Fox News). Its efficacy may be more in group cohesion than converting "others". [EDIT] incidentally, SNL probably played a large part in painting the (fairly negative) pop-culture image of Hillary that was such an important part of the 2016 election, overshadowing the whole race. Think mid- to late-Clinton-presidency SNL. So there's that.

gHosts 7y ago

It's finally happened. Satire can no longer compete with reality.

Digory 7y ago

Haha. Someone killed a "what, me worry?" comment. Guess that shows how little Mad impacted the next generation.

dang 7y ago
That was killed by software. HN has many software filters, most of which are based on past activities by spammers or trolls. Moderators review most such posts and unkill the legit comments, but users can also unkill them by vouching for them. To do that, click on the comment's timestamp to go to its page, then click 'vouch' at the top. (There's a small karma threshold, currently 30, before an account can do that.)

pg_bot 7y ago

I'll miss Mad, it's what I read as a kid waiting to get my hair cut. If you knew how the magazine was produced you could sense this day was coming. They are legendary for having staff members with 30-50 year careers. For example the guy who does the fold-ins, (every one of them has been made by one guy - Al Jaffee) is 98 and has been with the magazine for 64 years. The young guys in the office are likely in their 60's. Combine that with the decline in print media in general and I don't see a reasonable way to continue production.

thinkingkong 7y ago
Al Jaffee also wrote all the “snappy answers to stupid questions” which is basically a bible for funny. If you havent had the chance to read them Id highly suggest it.
- mynameishere 7y ago
  A bible for grinding a bit into the ground over decades. The book version of those had little blank templates so the reader could write his own "Snappy Answers". Why the hell not? I think Homer's were as good as any: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vb3aDRoO8Sw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vb3aDRoO8Sw ...I guess I'm a downer. Did you know Chevy Chase wrote gags for MAD? They had a lot of outside writers like that. Even Don Martin (whose cartoons seemed pretty straightforward, even if he was the "maddest") used writers for jokes.
Stratoscope 7y ago
Al Jaffee is still there? That is (or was?) awesome. I was a fan of his when I was a kid in the late 1950s.
- milquetoastaf 7y ago
  He still makes fold-ins for every issue!
  - vermontdevil 7y ago

gitgud 7y ago

> "When political humor seemed to work, MAD doubled down on lampooning the Trump administration, which earned some critical praise but likely alienated conservative readers as well as putting the magazine in direct competitions with late night shows that were delivering content nightly" This is so sad to see. The fact that they took the easy road of Trump jokes, is far from the magazine I once knew. They used to have witty images and commentary that would appeal to many...

TunnelTheMole 7y ago

As a 63yr.old, I have nothing but admiration and adoration for the staff, the magazine and the quick quips that remain with me. Nary a day goes by that my internal dialogue doesn't reference some part of MAD's escapes from the staid. As a child ( one of 5 siblings), Saturdays were spent going to and from dreary piano & theory lessons in St.Louis (pre-interstate and daylight savings time equaled a 2&1/2 hour ride, one way). Each of us usually had several hours in the city to "kill", wandering around the Woolworths and surrounding locale of Clayton, MO. MAD made the 2&1/2 hours home sandwiched inside the station wagon seem like my escape: the humour and wit between the pages, the cartoons & charactitures(sic?) hidden between the 'departments', and the political (sub)commentary relentlessly and endlessly amused me. I, too, read the issues from cover to cover, over and over..."Believe it or nuts", my heart mourns in its memory and mourns MAD's memorialized messages. RIP, Alfred E. Neumann! May you live forever in our minds and memories!

sizzzzlerz 7y ago
We're nearly the same age and I, too, was a huge fan of Mad during it's hey-days years in the 60s. I especially loved the satirization of current TV shows but what made the magazine so delicious was that our parents hated it (albeit, let us read it, anyway) and it was considered to be subversive by adults. How could it not be successful? I haven't read it in decades but it is a fond memory of my youth.
pjmorris 7y ago
I'm less than a decade behind you, but I share your appreciation. Just yesterday I was reminded of a joke from Mad that meant a lot to my entire family (I was the first, and most thorough, reader of each new issue, but everyone else sampled from it as well.) The appearance of a new issue at the grocery store was cause for celebration.

drmpeg 7y ago

My brother used to let me read Mad Magazine out loud to test my just learned reading skills when I was in 1st grade (circa 1963). One time, I pronounced a word as "eye-doyt". My brother knew that wasn't a word and had to look at the page. The word was actually "idiot".

ptah 7y ago

possibly as real life has become the same as the contents of mad? :)

tannhaeuser 7y ago

While I'm not sure why Mad will cease publishing exactly, I'm wondering what we can do to keep weird and edgy stuff afloat. Millenials and up are really missing out badly, and I'm blaming WWW economics as they have developed, along with the monopolistic sales channels and our reluctance to buy any online publication at all. Mad is even pretty mild/mainstream compared to the stuff we had in the 90s (in Germany at least). What option does an author/artist have today to make a buck with his works? Wasn't the WWW supposed to enable easy publishing for everybody?

dillonmckay 7y ago
Look what happened to ‘Cracked’, both offline and online.

acomjean 7y ago

Gothamist had some decent articles / videos on mad recently. Including one on Al Jafffee who did the folding back page. They’re short and pretty interesting. https://gothamist.com/2016/05/18/mad_magazine_video_tour.php https://gothamist.com/2016/05/18/mad_magazine_video_tour.php Al Jaffee interview: https://gothamist.com/2016/05/05/al_jaffee_mad_magazine.php https://gothamist.com/2016/05/05/al_jaffee_mad_magazine.php

drawkbox 7y ago

MAD helped the world learn to laugh at itself, including comedic cynicism and sarcasm with top notch satire aimed at everyone including themselves at MAD. MAD inspired all types of comedy from many greats today. Terry Gilliam called MAD's Harvey Kurtzman his mentor [1]. Judd Apatow says similar. It inspired Cracked, National Lampoon and many other comedy media. MAD was even partially responsible for the counter culture [2]. The re-launch I think wasn't truly the MAD spirit but I was hopeful for it continuing, always a subscriber. MAD didn't transition well after the internet, even though they were like a pre-internet must see destination. After 2000 they held under 250k subscribers [3]. I'll miss dearly new content from Alfred E. Neuman and the 'usual gang of idiots' for sure, but we'll always have MAD history. MAD will forever have changed the world and comedy for the better. The world could use more MAD satire today so it is sad to see it go. [1] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/5756899/My-MAD-mentor-Terry-Gilliam-on-Harvey-Kurtzman.html https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/5756899/My-MAD-men... [2] https://groovyhistory.com/mad-magazine-covers-1960s https://groovyhistory.com/mad-magazine-covers-1960s [3] https://blog.comichron.com/2019/07/the-complete-mad-magazine-sales-history.html https://blog.comichron.com/2019/07/the-complete-mad-magazine...

acomjean 7y ago

Because you need to see all the mad covers: (in 90s html, but it’s static so fast) https://www.madcoversite.com/covers.html https://www.madcoversite.com/covers.html

jccalhoun 7y ago

When they relaunched a year or two ago I tried to find an issue to buy. I went to the local chain bookstore, a couple supermarkets, and Walmart and couldn't find it. I didn't know if that was because none of those places had ordered it or if it was already sold out. Since then I have picked up a couple issues and found them to be pretty good. Sad to see them coming to an end.

sequoia 7y ago

I love mad magazine despite being born in the 1980s–I bought old copies from comic shops and the paperbacks were easy to find at used book stores. I even bought the cd-rom box-set with the entire archives at one point! My kids now read my old mad books and magazines. That said, I think it's good that they're packing it in. All good things must end some day, and Mad Magazine has been past its prime for some time now. As other commenters suggest, the context in which Mad was revolutionary & cutting has long past & its style of irreverence is now almost ubiquitous. But I can't say I won't miss the furshlugginer thing!

Razengan 7y ago

Speaking of Spy vs Spy, I have always wanted a modern game with the same mechanics as the Commodore 64 trilogy; players running around setting up comic traps against each other. Would make for some great couch multiplayer, especially on the Nintendo Switch! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yu2e866bEcM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yu2e866bEcM

emeryberger 7y ago

Shannon Wheeler shared this really excellent round up of Mad's decline written by Tom Richmond, a long-time MAD Magazine contributor. https://www.tomrichmond.com/the-end-of-the-madness/04/07/2019/ https://www.tomrichmond.com/the-end-of-the-madness/04/07/201...