I recall first encountering Mad magazine in the back row of my first grade home room. The kid next to me had sneaked it in as contraband.
I was never a huge fan but I would read it occasionally, as well as some of the bound collections.
Sad news, but they should work hard to not do a National Lampoon and shit all over their legacy for decades and devalue it for a few quick bucks.
At least we got a glimpse of what happens in their office.
So long as it’s drizzled with olive oil. 
I, like many of you, read MAD religiously as a child and as a teenager. I still have my issues from the late 50s to early 70s, and prize them. Those movie satires (often of movies my parents would never have allowed me to see), Don Martin, The Lighter Side of…, Spy vs Spy, the little cartoons in the margins…pure gold. I have to admit that I haven’t read an issue in decades, and when I did, I was disappointed. MAD was just never the same after Bill Gaines sold it to that furshlugginer* Warner Communications. It lost its edge and became little more than a comic book. But I’m sad that MAD will no longer be there. I’ve always said my sense of humor was influenced by (in chronological order) Ernie Kovacs, Stan Freberg, Jack Benny, Soupy Sales, and the usual gang of idiots at MAD. The first four are long gone, and now MAD too. Farewell Alfred E. Neuman!
*A Yiddish word often used in MAD. If you were a MAD fan, you know what it means.
I still have a handful of Mads from the early and mid-70s as well as 5 or 6 books from the 1960s. I’m gonna scour the valley for a copy of the August issue.
Like so many others, Mad Magazine was a crucial part of my developing sense of humor and of the world. Al Jaffe, Harvey Kurtzman, Sergio Aragones, Don Martin, Bill Gaines, Al Feldstein, Mort Drucker, Dave Berg, Jack Davis… all names I just pulled out of my head from 40+ years ago, no need to look them up. These people were huge in my life for a decade or so and now, all these years later, I don’t regret any of the time I spent with their work or their influence; in fact, I cherish it as one of the richest things in my life’s experience.
Hell, I still have at least 4 of the original Alfred E. Neuman posters I bought as a kid in the '70s. I’m gonna have to find a nice frame for one of them now, I guess. It’ll look great in my library.
I began reading it in the mid 1960’s and loved it. I gave it up in the early 1970’s when I discovered National Lampoon. But it was a classic, and left its stamp on my personality. My humor is very much in line with their early material.
Fare thee well, Alfred E. Neuman! I could plotz!
I understand they are now a quarterly.
Alas! Alfred E. has cause to worry.
Where will I go for my Spiro Agnew jokes now?
I read it religiously from middle school to my early teens. Always thought it was better than Cracked or Crazy. Heck it was part of my early sex education.
Adieu, usual gang of idiots. Meet you on the Squamish court.
Heck, I’m still reading it, after fifty years. Never subscribed, bought it from the newsstand always, but have quite the collection. Nothing in collectible shape, as pretty much every issue I own has been read and re-read repeatedly.
But it was an influence on me growing up, and in my adult years. Sad to see it go.
Potrzebie!
You gaines some, you lose some…
Now we’ll never know what a Veeblefetzer is used for!
Another article here: MAD Magazine Is Ceasing Publication of Original Content, May Shut Down Entirely
One of MAD’s contributors tweeted: “It’s wild that Al Jaffee [AFAIK still doing the fold-in at age 98] outlasted MAD as a living entity. I wish others were still here as well to raise a seltzer bottle. And I wish MAD would hire Jaffee to do the cover for the last original issue of the magazine. Because, for all intents and purposes, MAD is folding.”
I had a considerable collection of original MADs from the 1950s and '60s saved in my family’s homestead. Unfortunately all were tossed when Mom moved in the 1970’s. The culprit was my ultra-religious uncle, who took charge during the move. MADs were most definitely not Christian-approved material, being a product of The Devil or worse. Comedy is NOT something to laugh about!
Oh, that’s sad. It was THE thing to read back in the 60’s, and they had some really snarky, clever stuff (to kids, teenagers) - their movie parodies had us in stitches. My brothers and I spent hours looking for the tiny cartoons in the margins. But I haven’t read it in decades. A A couple years ago a friend asked me to see if I could find a copy on the magazine stand. It took some time, I found out it was published quarterly, and I found it at Barnes & Noble, of all places. Sadly, my friend and I took a look and really had no idea what they were satirizing, who the ‘celebrities’ mentioned were, and just found it disappointing. But in the past, we were all over it.
Damn! And @#%&*!!!
I just bought the latest copy a couple of days ago. The Clerk at Barnes and Noble told me a lot of people have been buying it. Sign that it’s still popular, or sign that word of Impending Doom leaked out?
Even at its worst, I have enjoyed Mad. Its a necessary anodyne to the Modern World (and to Trump in particular). Its “Twenty Worst Things about (year)” was one of its better new features.
And now it’s going to be gone? After all the other humor magazines bit the dust – Cracked, National Lampoon, even Punch?
Hail and farewell.
Potrzebie
Poiuyt
What, me worry?
Good (though not Great) News! Mad is NOT ceasing publication altogether!
https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/04/media/mad-magazine-cease-publication-trnd/index.html
I’m hoping that the End-of-the-Year Special will include new material (like the Twenty Worst Things), so that it won’t ALL be reprints only.
Hey, once-a-year Mad is still better than none.
Time to pour a Moxie out for the UGoI.