Mad Magazine

Brosnan_fan

Do you enjoy Mad Magazine, and for how long have you been reading it?

Recently I enjoyed their send-up of The Da Vinci Code (The Da Vinci Coma )), and I generally look forward to Spy vs. Spy. B-)

I've been collecting the occasional issue over the years; it often gives me great laughs. {[]

Hardyboy

I used to be a regular Mad reader from the time I was a kid until I entered college. I always loved it--Don Martin's bizarre cartoons, Mort Drucker's dead-on caricatures of movie stars in those wonderful parodies (201 Min. of A Space Idiocy, The Great Gasbag, and let's not forget 00$--Moneyraker and For Her Thighs Only), Al Jaffe's snappy answers to stupid questions. . .great stuff, and I think it all influenced my generally satirical view of life. I'm also a huge fan of the original Mad comic book, with Harvey Kurtzman's biting storylines and the artwork of such greats as Wally Wood, Jack Davis, and the immortal Will Elder.

I'm sorry to say, though, that on the few times I've leafed through a recent Mad I haven't liked what I've seen. Real ads--yuck. Format--cluttered and chaotic. And, sorry Brosnan_fan, but I really think that Mad should have allowed "Spy Vs. Spy" to die with Antonio Prohias. His original cartoons were masterpieces, but these new ones are just gross and crude. Maybe it's an age thing, but I prefer Mad the way it was rather than the way it is.

caractacus potts

I loved it when I was a kid
my mum still thinks it was the cause of evrything going wrong, me not becoming a banker or a CEO or something

but even when I was a kid (early/mid 70s) it was obvious after 2 consecutive issues they were repeating a formula, and the reprints in the SuperSpecials and paperbacks were usually more interesting
even when I had no clue what was being satirised in those reprints
the older ones were just weirder, and more creative
I had to keep asking "mommy whats Vietnam? whats Kent State? who's Timothy Leary?"

nowadays the MAD content I like best is the early comic book material, created by Harvey Kurtzman, Will Elder, Wally Wood, and Jack Davis
and the stuff Kurtzman and Elder did after leaving MAD
heres a bit of trivia I bet someone out there doesnt know: Terry Gilliam (Monty Python, Brazil, etc etc) was a Kurtzman protege: he was assistant editor for HELP!, one of Kurtzman's postMAD projects, that also started the careers of Robert Crumb and Gilbert Shelton
also: Rene Goscinny shared a studio once with Kurtzman, Elder, John Severin and Dave Berg in the late 40s, a decade before creating Asterix the Gaul

how about this:
Don Martin once did a Miles Davis album cover?!!?

Mr Martini

Never really read Mad Magazine. But I do have a question about it. Who is Alfred E. Newman based on? (If anybody)

caractacus potts

theres a good brief explanation on Wikipedia
the What Me Worry? face goes back to the turn of the last century, well before there was a MAD magazine