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Mad Magazine #CANCELLED

Started by Wet Blanket, July 04, 2019, 09:31:15 AM

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Ambient Sheep

Quote from: gilbertharding on July 04, 2019, 03:53:34 PM
It's also a nice parallel to the fact that I was exposed as a quite small child to Punch magazine from being left in the library on a Saturday morning, or twice a year in the dentist's waiting room. The world of small men behind enormous desks, or stuck on desert islands, Libby Purves and Miles Kington cracking wise about Norman St John Stevas and Tony Wedgewood Benn is almost as evocative of a 70s childhood as the smell of Players No 6 smoke mixed with Wrigleys spearmint gum on the top deck of a Bristol VR.

We used to get it in our school library.

Used to look at all the cartoons, then the Caption Competition and that was about it.  Occasionally read the Miles Kington and Alan Coren pieces as I got older.

Will start a new thread for this obviously, but would there be any interest in doing a CaB read-along of the first 23 issues of Mad? Maybe an issue a week or every few days or something. That Harvey Kurtzman era seems to have been very formative in comedy history. They're all easily 'available' for free to read online, so anyone could join in whether they're familiar with them already or not. Might be cool to have a mix of first time readers and people who have memories of them. I thought it might be fun to read them and have a chat about how the impact they had on the wider world of comedy, how they influenced underground comics, and basically whether they've held up. Let me know if that's something that people might be up for? Seems like a good time to do it

Ambient Sheep

I dunno what other people feel but whenever I've looked at really early MAD I was always disappointed.  I might feel differently 30 years on though.  Could be interesting.

It definitely takes a few issues to really get going, when it starts moving away from just being a parody of an EC comic and starts becoming its own thing. The art is great from the start though

McChesney Duntz

Quote from: Monsieur Verdoux on July 04, 2019, 06:16:42 PM
Will start a new thread for this obviously, but would there be any interest in doing a CaB read-along of the first 23 issues of Mad?

YES.

This is pretty devastating news to me - I was introduced to MAD at the age of four (!) and somehow "got" it immediately, and spent my entire childhood from then to about 12 fully and totally obsessed with the whole MAD ethos. Being introduced to irreverence before I could process reverence undoubtedly changed the structure of my brain, for better (a lifelong inability to fully subscribe to any and all modes of thinking/ideologies/philosophies) and for less-better (I am loathed by middle managers on sight, making career advancement impossible), and of course, my deep and abiding love of comedy derives directly from this source, which is only right because pretty much all comedy (Stateside, at least) of the last half-century-plus does the same. I know it's not entirely going away - in fact, I'm very much considering springing for a subscription for the first time in 35 years, as the issues going forward are bound to be collectors' items, and the all-classics format guarantees a certain level of consistency - but it still feels like the end of something very meaningful and profound. And fershlugginer.

Brundle-Fly

Quote from: Danger Man on July 04, 2019, 11:00:53 AM

Maybe they can reinvent themselves on the internet like Cracked magazine did.

Apparently, the website has nothing to do with the magazine; the site just bought up rights to the brand. Who remembers the other Mad copycat comic, Crazy? They even had their own mascot like Alfred. E. Neuman (and Cracked comic's Sylvester the janitor)




Anyway, gald to read the love for Mad comic on here. Some great posts. They really shaped my humour as a kid.As important as Python to me.

McChesney Duntz

Quote from: Monsieur Verdoux on July 04, 2019, 06:38:19 PM
It definitely takes a few issues to really get going, when it starts moving away from just being a parody of an EC comic and starts becoming its own thing. The art is great from the start though

Once they lock into their sacred-cow-punching groove, the sheer multivalent density of their artistic approach, and the realization that every single aspect of the format and presentation of the comic book is ripe for de(con)struction - in other words, issue #4, "Superduperman" - they proceed to take off like a goddamned bullet train. There's stuff in those early issues that still boggles my mind, such as the cover to issue #21, which is both made up to look like a Johnson & Smith novelty company ad (the sort of thing that would be buried deep on an inside page) and so full of gags in tiny, tiny type as to be nigh-unreadable in the original format - http://4cp.posthaven.com/mad-number-21-cover-by-harvey-kurtzman-1955

(While looking for this cover, I discovered this from the April '19 issue - https://arnoldzwicky.org/2019/02/21/for-gay-penguins-science-and-canada/ - which is revelatory in that a) the same format is still recognizably parody-able 65 years later and b) in it may lie the key to both MAD's demise and the decline and fall of satire in general at the hands of Poe's Law; I am chagrined to admit that my eyes flashed red for a moment at the sight of the word "LIBTARD" before I realized what was really being satirized, and after almost five decades marinating my brain in mockery, I really should better know better than that. (Tragically, it's making me a little gun-shy as well; I devoted the last half-hour of my radio show last night to a tribute to MAD's various incursions into audio, including this parody of All in the Family from 1973 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UhIpR1x1-fI. Call it cautiousness, call it cowardice, call it Ishmael or late for dinner or whatever, but, despite being aired at quarter to one in the morning on a non-commercial, freeform community radio station, I just couldn't bring myself to broadcast this thing I happily devoured without incident at age eight without bleeping out some of the riper slurs, though the intent behind their deployment was, seemingly, obvious. But I wasn't ready to deal with the potential [if rather unlikely, considering the majority of my audience most weeks can be found sitting at the studio console and wearing my pants] blowback from the imagined satirically tonedeaf hordes poised to breach the gates of radioland and separate my apostate's head from my shoulders before I even have a chance to take my headphones off. There's something deeply dispiriting about all this. Maybe just the overwriting.)

bigfatheart

Quote from: Brundle-Fly on July 04, 2019, 07:15:03 PM
Who remembers the other Mad copycat comic, Crazy?

Published by Marvel Comics, so look forward to a film adaptation any day now.

Ambient Sheep

Quote from: McChesney Duntz on July 04, 2019, 07:37:38 PM
Once they lock into their sacred-cow-punching groove, the sheer multivalent density of their artistic approach, and the realization that every single aspect of the format and presentation of the comic book is ripe for de(con)struction - in other words, issue #4, "Superduperman" - they proceed to take off like a goddamned bullet train. There's stuff in those early issues that still boggles my mind, such as the cover to issue #21, which is both made up to look like a Johnson & Smith novelty company ad (the sort of thing that would be buried deep on an inside page) and so full of gags in tiny, tiny type as to be nigh-unreadable in the original format - http://4cp.posthaven.com/mad-number-21-cover-by-harvey-kurtzman-1955

Wow, that's amazing.  Not the sort of thing I was talking about (have never seen the early issues of MAD itself, only the early paperbacks full of Will Elder stuff, which left me cold as a child).

I'm now definitely in for this reading thing.

mippy

Where would one find them online? I missed out on MAD completely and thi thread makes me want to change that.


madhair60

This still tickles me whenever I think of it:






McChesney Duntz

Quote from: Ambient Sheep on July 04, 2019, 07:51:33 PM
(have never seen the early issues of MAD itself, only the early paperbacks full of Will Elder stuff, which left me cold as a child).

Maybe you need to have seen them in color and full size (or larger). I mean, I have no idea how one couldn't be deeply impressed-unto-amazed by the likes of this:

https://readcomiconline.to/Comic/MAD/Issue-16?id=72904#21


chveik

Quote from: Monsieur Verdoux on July 04, 2019, 06:16:42 PM
Will start a new thread for this obviously, but would there be any interest in doing a CaB read-along of the first 23 issues of Mad?

that sounds like a great idea Monsieur, I've never read Mad.

ajsmith2

Count me up for the first 23 readalong.

Danger Man

Quote from: McChesney Duntz on July 04, 2019, 08:57:24 PM
Maybe you need to have seen them in color and full size (or larger). I mean, I have no idea how one couldn't be deeply impressed-unto-amazed by the likes of this:

https://readcomiconline.to/Comic/MAD/Issue-16?id=72904#21

Bill Elder IS early Mad magazine


madhair60


Former

It's weird, but I feel as though I already said Goodbye to Mad in the mid-1990s when the UK edition suddenly ceased publication.

I know the US is the 'real' version, that most of the stuff came across from the US version and a lot of the UK-specific content was pretty lame. But for me, British Mad *was* Mad, and it ended when it ended. Maybe because I was about 16 and naturally growing out of it/transferring my affections to Viz at the time.

I collected back issues fairly avidly and still have most issues from about 150 to the end, plus a few much prized earlier ones, assuming they're still in my Mum's attic. A tonne of the paperbacks too, some of which were pretty good.

But in the past 25 years I've probably read about four pages of US Mad, so struggling to feel too upset.

Jockice

I've always avoided it because I bought a Mad book at a jumble sale when I was about nine and there was a joke in it about Laika, that dog that got sent into space by The Russians. I found that quite upsetting and vowed never to read it again. Which apart from a couple of times I haven't

Autopsy Turvey

Lovely to see all the MADlove. I still buy a copy whenever I see one in a shop, which is not often but can be the most unlikely places (Wickham Square?!). I was in the US last year and thought the copy of the relaunched mag that I picked up in a suburban drugstore was better than any I'd seen for years. I subscribed between the ages of 9 and 16 (oddly enough my first issue was the 1985 Rock Special - odd because it's the only one I can remember owning that doesn't have Alfred on the cover). I even have some summer specials that I got on holiday in Switzerland, I can't understand the words but it's still the only version of their Grease parody that I've seen. Along with Python it taught me everything I know about scepticism, distrust of authority, media and consensus, and a general light-hearted disdain for everything. Made me quite an annoying child (and man), I'm sure!

Chriddof

Quote from: Former on July 05, 2019, 01:53:38 AM
It's weird, but I feel as though I already said Goodbye to Mad in the mid-1990s when the UK edition suddenly ceased publication.

I know the US is the 'real' version, that most of the stuff came across from the US version and a lot of the UK-specific content was pretty lame. But for me, British Mad *was* Mad, and it ended when it ended. Maybe because I was about 16 and naturally growing out of it/transferring my affections to Viz at the time.

That's pretty much the same situation with me. I do feel a bit sad about US MAD ending, but like you, it's been gone for decades for me. I have fond memories of the October 1985 issue with its Special Computer Section, which had type-in listings for a program that drew Alfred E Neuman's face in various iterations of BASIC. Here's a link that tells you how to emulate it:

http://atariprojects.org/2018/09/11/mad-magazine-basic-program-10-15-mins/