With MAD magazine recently announcing a cutback to just a quarterly publication and laying off several staffers in an ordered company-wide cost-cutting campaign by the ownership at Time Warner, it is only the latest blow to hit humor, satire and parody magazines where MAD is the sole survivor out of group of many great magazines to fold over the years. The recession certainly has not helped the efforts of MAD magazine either. In general, most print publications of all types including both magazines and newspapers are suffering in a real sales slump right now, where many big name publications could cease publication soon.
MAD is not only cutting back to just a quarterly publication, but the TV show by the same name is ending over at FOX. And the MAD specials which were large compilations of older features and MAD KIDS are also ending their publication runs as well. For MAD going from a eight times a year publication under the direction of the legendary William Gaines to a monthly publication under the ownership of TIME WARNER, to now just a quarterly publication is not a good trend. Not good at all. This magazine is just barely hanging on for dear life. Some distributors may be less apt to want to carry MAD with the sporadic quarterly distribution schedule compared to more regular monthly schedule of the recent past. This might well be the beginning of the end for MAD.
MAD also had many good competitors at one time. CRACKED magazine was once perhaps the best competitor that MAD magazine ever had. It featured great 1950's style cartooning that seemed to resist the trend of MAD to update their magazine over the years. But CRACKED seem doomed after a 2001 anthrax scare incident to their main office now located in Florida caused the magazine to miss a critical publishing deadline, and some major distributors lost interest in carrying the magazine, and sales tumbled. A short-lived attempt to revive the magazine in a whole new format unlike the old magazine quickly failed after just three issues in February of 2007. Even THE WASHINGTON POST ran a scathing review of the new revamped magazine as unfunny compared to old publication.
But there were other humor magazines styled after MAD including CRAZY and SICK, although EC Publications that was the founder of MAD once provided their own competition with another humor comic called PANIC. But both CRAZY and SICK had some good moments in their history. CRAZY was a really great attempt to imitate the formula of MAD, but it ultimately failed. SICK sometimes had problems with too much bad taste, especially for younger buyers. MAD by comparison seemed to get things just about right between challenging the status quo and authority, without appearing too trashy or radical. MAD had a decidedly liberal political bent, highly critical of corporate greed as well as government hypocrisy. It was for a generation that questioned authority long before the religious right in America taught followers not to question anything, only to follow orders, and not to think for themselves. With his long hair and beard long before many others looked the same, former MAD publisher William Gaines was a publishing industry rebel with a cause. 
ARCHIE'S MAD HOUSE and PLOP managed to revive the early 1950's comic book beginnings of the EC magazines for a time, and both were very good but short-lived efforts aimed a grade school aged audience. PLOP even featured those unique Basil Wolverton illustrations on the front cover, where the cover art alone was worth the cost of the magazine. PLOP also managed to carry humor in a weird direction with bizarre tales, besides some great artistic contributions from MAD's Sergio Aragones. It was a real gem for a time.
NATIONAL LAMPOON and HARPOON(later renamed and revamped into APPLE PIE, a parody of PEOPLE magazine) carried humor mags in a whole different and ground breaking direction as did THE ONION and HARVARD LAMPOON. During the 1970's NATIONAL LAMPOON was a great magazine catering to a young and hip college age market of buyers. NATIONAL LAMPOON was also more adult in content as well, often finding itself sold behind store counters next to PLAYBOY or PLAYGIRL magazines. But it had some awesome features including an incredible "Miracle Monopoly" cheating kit with fake cards and special features to win a monopoly game including a "Shoot The Moon" card allowing one winner to essentially take all. In 1976, a special election issue with Carter and Ford lookalikes was a real gem. 
But the sad fact of the matter is that humor, satire and parody magazines are on a real downward spiral right now. MAD magazine may not survive. And television's SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE as well as clever bloggers might just end up doing all the heavy lifting for satire and parody in the near future. This is one recession that MAD magazine might not be able to laugh it's way out of.
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Comments (8)
Oh, man. That is terrible ... (Below threshold)1. Posted by LaMedusa | July 20, 2009 2:40 AM | Score: 0 (0 votes cast)
Oh, man. That is terrible news, Paul. One of my favorite parodies by Mad was Robocop. The fact that they couldn't stick with one name is what made it priceless, "Roboschlock, Rubecop," etc. I may have to order a subscription now while it's still around. Cracked was okay, but Mad was the novelty that started it all.
1. Posted by LaMedusa | July 20, 2009 2:40 AM |
Score: 0 (0 votes cast)
Posted on July 20, 2009 02:40
2. Posted by Jay Tea | July 20, 2009 8:01 AM | Score: 0 (0 votes cast)
How could you forget the late, lamented, and criminally brilliant SPY?
Sigh...
J.
2. Posted by Jay Tea | July 20, 2009 8:01 AM |
Score: 0 (0 votes cast)
Posted on July 20, 2009 08:01
3. Posted by Film Production | July 20, 2009 4:24 PM | Score: 2 (2 votes cast)
MAD was a wonderfully subversive satire magazine, and had a successful special formula, which they've whittled away almost entirely over the past half-century, so I'm not surprised it's fading as a business enterprise. Sorry, but not surprised. MAD Secret Formula had four parts:
1) MAD carried no advertising, and was sold primarily by subscription. They had a list, and they really worked that list. I used to get wonderful stuff from them through the mail. MAD wasn't just a magazine, it was a secret club of wackos. Now there are ads. What used to be defined by decency and conscience is now just dollars and cents. There cannot be an honest reference to a sponsor's product in the New MAD, any more than a movie parody of "Schindler's List" would have been allowed in the old.
2) MAD's biggest Fan was also its Publisher, Bill Gaines, a real person who wanted his magazine to come out every month, so much so he paid for it from his own pocket. He paid his writers immediately, by personal check. Now? MAD's just another province of the DC Comics division of print arm of the Time-Warner empire. Do they care? Are You Nuts? What Me Worry?
3) Though MAD's "Usual Gang of Idiots" laughed at the stupid bits of public school, they put the literacy bar pretty high. I learned classic poems and stories in MAD ("Dick Tracy in the style of Gilbert and Sullivan" comes to mind) and I learned it better than in any school. I studied comedy writing from Arnie Kogen, Dick DeBartolo, Frank Jacobs, Stan Hart, Tom Koch, Harvey Kurtzman, Al Feldstein, and of course MAD's Maddest Artist, Don Martin. I learned how to draw from copying the incomparable Wally Wood, Will Elder, and Mort Drucker. I also learned how to write poetry (real poetry with rhymes, scansion, and meter) from the brilliant Frank Jacobs. All that each month for 50 cents cheap.
4) The stuff they made fun of...deserved it! There was a sense of wacky justice in their lampoon. Dare I say it, MAD had a conscience, and it wasn't vile or vulgar. While MAD was funky sometimes, there weren't any bad words, and you couldn't ever call MAD raunchy, even though it even shared many creative minds with Hefner's adult mag PLAYBOY. Now? Toilet "humor," gross weirdness, and gratuitous vulgarity. The garbage on the cover deters me from even opening my once-beloved MAD, I shudder kids are getting vulgar coaching. It's terrible they parody things because they are visible, not because they are stupid and cynical and hypocritical and just plain wrong. Too bad.
I realize all this has been said before. MAD is not as good as it used to be, and that has been oddly true for most of its history.
I'm sorry if MAD will cease publication, but classic MAD has been dead to me for years.
RIP MAD.
Sam Longoria
Hollywood CA USA
http://samlongoria.blogspot.com
3. Posted by Film Production | July 20, 2009 4:24 PM |
Score: 2 (2 votes cast)
Posted on July 20, 2009 16:24
4. Posted by Paul Hooson | July 20, 2009 4:58 PM | Score: 0 (0 votes cast)
Thanks so much for some wonderful comments LaMedusa, Jay and Sam. I'm glad to have heard such warm remembrances for the proud tradition of humor, parody and satire magazines. Up until CRACKED folded, it became a real favorite of mine. But I found a short-lived magazine in my collection called TRASH that I thought was a real gem with an outrageous parody on MAD. It included a Don Martin parody and a fold-in parody as well that were pretty good stuff.
I'm considering a part two on this subject and including TRASH, SPY and a few more interesting titles.
4. Posted by Paul Hooson | July 20, 2009 4:58 PM |
Score: 0 (0 votes cast)
Posted on July 20, 2009 16:58
5. Posted by LaMedusa | July 20, 2009 11:23 PM | Score: 0 (0 votes cast)
Great post, Paul. Sam's insightful comment gave me the heads up to see if I can find archived copies instead.
5. Posted by LaMedusa | July 20, 2009 11:23 PM |
Score: 0 (0 votes cast)
Posted on July 20, 2009 23:23
6. Posted by andy a | July 21, 2009 4:24 AM | Score: 0 (0 votes cast)
Legs McNeil tried a Music version in the 90's, Nerve.
Mad and National Lampoon taught me to read.
The Onion is still carrying on, but what about our artists? College Humor, Jib/Jab, and even Ebaumsworld fill in a lot of gaps.
Look at Warez sites, and what people are pirating... They do Mad and National Lampoon, that means there's still an audience... I think they should save the trees and go paperless. I think all mags should, and with their reduced costs, they can contribute to 100 dollar laptop program. Kids are smart, and they know where to find it when they care, and will do anything to get it.
6. Posted by andy a | July 21, 2009 4:24 AM |
Score: 0 (0 votes cast)
Posted on July 21, 2009 04:24
7. Posted by jzipperer | July 21, 2009 9:04 PM | Score: 0 (0 votes cast)
Great blog. There are others -- the very short-lived Mole in the 1980s, the short-lived International Insanity in the 1970s, and the borderline Spy in the 1990s -- but you got the main suspects.
7. Posted by jzipperer | July 21, 2009 9:04 PM |
Score: 0 (0 votes cast)
Posted on July 21, 2009 21:04
8. Posted by Steve | August 6, 2009 3:24 AM | Score: 0 (0 votes cast)
You know, this evening, I was watching a film, and it suddenly occurred to me: I hadn't received another Mad issue since #500 came out a long while back. I figured maybe they were taking a little break after #500, to let that milestone sink in.
Unfortunately, I came online to check what might be up, and, well...damn, this is terrible. Seriously.
My first Mad? #216. Parody of the first Star Trek movie was in it.
Incidentally, I loved Crazy, too. And would you believe it? The one featured in your post, #66, is the first one I ever got! And, believe it or not, I was looking at that just yesterday. I love to read my old Mad's and Crazy's. This has been one tough, Darwinian recession -- I do hope Mad survives...
8. Posted by Steve | August 6, 2009 3:24 AM |
Score: 0 (0 votes cast)
Posted on August 6, 2009 03:24