I picked this up today in the local comic store (you used to be able to get Mad at the newsstand, but even the few remaining places selling magazines don’t seem to carry it – only “Special” issues).
1.) Issue #600! They’ve gone back to what they’re calling “legacy numbering”, so instead of "volume 2, issue #50), this is just issue #600. That’s going to screw with obsessive fans.
2.) There’s more new material in this issue than reprints! Mad magazine lives!
3.) It’s the June issue, so it’s been out for a while.
4.) It looks as if, before they decided to go back to “legacy numbering”, they were considering a different cover:
After subscribing since 1987, I let my subscription lapse maybe 3 years back. I still look at my old ones from time to time and they still make me laugh, but it had become mostly repeats of stuff I read the 1st time around. Anyone else still reading regularly?
I have fond memories of Mad. As a wee lad, when we visited my aunt, I saw that as an opportunity to sit on the floor of the closet next to my older cousin’s stack of Mads. These were late-to mid 1960s issues. I was in heaven.
(He also had a stack of Playboys nearby, not that Young Master Mustard ever went near them)
Well, that at least partially answers a couple of questions I had: is there anybody still involved that I would remember from my days reading Mad, and did the Fold-in survive the death of Al Jaffee?
There have been quite a few fold-ins not by Al Jaffee, and they started before he left us (although he did leave a last fold-in that I believe was run in the special Al Jaffee tribute issue)
Mad has always had a reputation as a kid’s magazine. It certainly caters to a certain age group and, heck, it started out as a standard-size comic book.
But, at the same time, it’s pretty clear that Mad has also had plenty of material aimed at older audiences. Like the article about dating widows/divorcees. Or the parodies of movies that kids were unlikely to have seen (The Carpetbaggers, Midnight Cowboy, Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice, The Sandpiper, …I could go on). Or the interview with the sleazy paperback publisher that pretty much assumes familiarity with those sleazy paperbacks. Or Al Jaffee’s “spread the wealth” piece about filing income tax reports. Or Sy Reit’s “Get it Out of your System Land.”
Granted, those were mor common in the 1960s, but Mad always did put in something to cater to and appease older audiences. And it didn’t hurt the younger ones to learn about how insane the adult world was, even to adults.
I had a subscription back in the mid-1960s when MAD #100 came out. Gold cover, with the words “MAD proudly presents its 100th issue” and underneath that, Alfred E. Neuman with his usual grin saying “Big deal!”
So now it’s up to #600, huh? I didn’t even know that it was still around. Good for them! And Sergio Aragones is still drawing for them, six decades later? Wow!
I only know about a lot of movies specifically because of the Mad parody.
I remember getting my magazine taken away because I laughed out loud reading it during class, and then hearing the teacher laugh at it as he read it during a test.
I remember that one. Illustrated by George Woodbridge. Just a big two-page splash of what looks like a carnival. Look closer, and the booths are not typical carnival games. Rather, they are things like “Punch the Boss,” with a player hauling off and punching an inflatable boss effigy; “Bull in a China Shop,” where you could break all the china and crystal on display; and “Demolition Derby” in the background, where you could get all of your road rage out before the term “road rage” was even invented. There were plenty of others, where you could basically take out your frustration on just about anything. A great item.
Bob Clarke was another illustrator whose work I enjoyed. He’d worked in advertising, and was great with ad parodies, but he did plenty of “Behind the Scenes at …” items.
I thought that Mad had stopped publishing, but I guess they can do as they like. I’ll look forward to getting Issue 600. As you infer, you’re never too old for Mad.
There was more – a booth where you could put on big muddy boots and stomp around on a white ug. And a photobooth where you could be photographed as our favorite evil person from the past. The sign lists "Hitler…Stalin’…Attila the Hun… " and …Sy Reit. Who the hell was Sy Reit? I scanned the picture and saw his name listed as the writer for that piece. That’s the first time I recall seeing his name, and why I remember it. Seymour Victory Reit, among other things the original writer (and possibly the co-creator of) Caspar the Friendly Ghost:
George Woodbridge was an interesting character, as well. Many years ago I visited the National Heritage Museum in Lexington MA (now the Scottish Rite Masonic Museum) and noticed that the drawings of soldiers were uncannily familiar. Then I suddenly realized that they were in the style of the Mad illustrator. Woodbridge was known as “America’s Dean of Uniform Illustration” because of his expertise and knowledge of military dress. And not just military – when Mad magazine featured Noah (of the Arc) doing a rap song, Woodbrodge drew him, and I noticed that the clothing was exact and historically – well, likely, if not necessarily accurate – right down to the lovingly-rendered shoes the patriarch was wearing.
Woodbridge was especially well-known for one of my all-time favorite Mad pieces “43 man Squamish”
