I’ve got a pile of MAD Magazines in my garage that is about 3 ft high. These are all from yesteryear and they’re still funny. But now I have cancelled my subscription beacuse they are BORING these days.
Is it just the Australian version that sucks or have people noticed a drop in quality in the US version aswell?
It’s probably when Don Martin left.
No way, Hermann Mejia rocks. He’s the only artist I can think of. “The Lighter Side of…” sucks now but that’s just because it’s not the real deal. Kind of like how Kermit started to suck once Jim Henson died.
I wrote a little blurb on the downfall of MAD a little while ago. It looked at it from the ‘sell out’ angle.
MAD started sucking, I think, when they went through that slight ‘format’ change a few years ago. They started a more “in-your-face” attitude (end quote) - read: less anti-establishment, more fart jokes.
It became ‘targeted’ and ‘researched’ and vanilla-stupid. They tried to become the MTV of periodicals - driving away many who didn’t want that and picking up few. Those who want MTV get it in spades daily - few want to wait 8-10 times/year.
And the advertising. Don’t get me started.
Bill Gaines, where have you gone?
IMHO, MAD jumped the shark when “The Lighter Side of” strips started featuring several topics in one edition, instead of just one.
Mad sucked since about 1979, frankly.
This should be in IMHO.
GuanoLad: Thou blaspheme!
This IS an opinion thread, tho.
Ok so “IMHO”
Sorry all, I’m still feeling my way around.
laugh at the newbie
OYS!
In many ways Gaines was the heart of Mad. He also
kept Mad safe from the influence of the multinational
megacorp that owned it.
My favorites are the first few years. There’s something about “Fonebone, put down that fershlugginer potzrebie !” that I love.
You mean the first few years it was a magazine, as opposed to a comic book? Don Martin, Mister Fonebone himself, didn’t start appearing in it until the early sixties. Or maybe late fifties.
I think 1981 was MAD’s last good year. Though some of the Pac-Man stuff was kinda funny.
ADVERTISING??? IN Mad? I’m so out of the loop. That’s just not cool. Not cool at all.
They sure do tear into that Spiro Agnew guy, though. He must work there or something.
Don Martin’s artwork appears toward the end of Mad About the Fifties. I think they brought him aboard in '57 or '58.
I’ll vote for the death of Bill Gaines as the turning point. The same people had kept doing the same thing for long enough to go stale, but Gaines kept them going.
But it isn’t a great loss. Not that long ago, only MAD did that style of irreverent, ironic humor. Now it’s everywhere: SNL, Simpsons, Jackass, most network sitcoms, etc. MAD’s own niche got co-opted in the process.
The plant blossomed, spread its seeds over a wide fertile area, and is now dying. But the progeny is everywhere.
For once, I think Elvis is right on the mark. It’s not so much that Mad stopped being funny. It’s more that Mad became a victim of its own success. In the early 70s, when I was a kid, Mad was unique. It was one of the only places a kid could find cynical, smart alecky humor. But with the coming of Saturday Night Live and David Letterman (and a host of other shows), cynical, sarcastic, snotty humor went mainstream!
I’m 40, so I can stil lremember when kids were expected to show respect and reverence for a host of institutions. Thus, when a 12 year old discovered Mad in the early 70s, it was a liberating experience. It was, for many of us, the first taste of cynicism. It was the first time we’d seen our leaders presented as crooks or (at best) incompetents. Mad confirmed every 12 year old’s secret suspicions:
Well, today, the cynical view represented by Mad is EVERYWHERE. Come on, what’s left for Mad to satirize, in a world where nothing is sacred? In 1972, it was new and shocking to see the President ridiculed. Today, nobody thinks twice when Jay Leno or Conan O’Brien presents BIll Clinton as a pervert or George W. Bush as a coke-snorting dunce. In 1972, it was novel for Mad to ridicule TV commercials. Today, the ad writers are guys who grew up reading Mad, and they load their own commercials with cynicism and self-parody.
A satirist needs sacred cows to mock. Where are the sacred cows of today?
I’m with elmwood. When Dave Berg lost the ability to focus on one topic for an entire “department;” that’s when the MAD we all knew and loved was no more.
That wasn’t the only thing wrong with it, but that’s the point where you mark its fall.
IMHO…
Right after Bill Gaines died was when the magazine started to go downhill, just didn’t seem as funny as before. I only started reading Mad in the mid-80’s, but I thought it really good back then.
Don’t get me started on those damn ads they’re putting in the magazine now, just to put it bluntly, I fuckin’ hate 'em.
I have a subsciption to the mag, but I don’t even know if I will renew it when it’s up.
Do yourselves a favor and track down a copy of “Totally MAD” a 7-CDROM collection of every MAD magazine and special from the first issue up until December 1998. Not only do you get the magazine, you get interviews and animation. Also, the fold-ins are animated, too!
Mr. Blue Sky: Not to mention the roll of toilet paper printed with Mad cartoons. Seriously, though, the interviews alone are worth the price. Not to mention all the Spiro Agnew jokes you could ever want.
I can’t beleive there’s ads in Mad magazine now. Hell, Mad was where I first learned not to trust advertising (or politicians, now that I think about it, but it was years until that lesson actually mattered). As always, the Simpsons summed up the modern Mad magazine best: “Wait, I’ve got it! Everybody Hates Raymond!” “That’s the title we were looking for! I knw this all-nighter would pay off!” Oh, well. Maybe it can survive long enough to become relevant again.
While still occasionally funny, MAD is now just mostly tired and predictable. I don’t know exactly when the change occured, but I first noticed it in the early 90’s. I remember reading MAD religiously in the 80’s and never being disappointed. Now you might as well read CRACKED. I know, what blasphemy.
When Gaines died. I wouldn’t have thought he made such a difference, but he did. The magazine went over to pure nasty almost overnight. You can’t be funny and mean-spirited…well, you can, but not in Gaines’ paradise.
My first issue was #275 (Beverly Hills Cop 2 cover). I had seen the piece “60 Minutes” did and wanted to know more; one of the draws was the lack of advertising. #275 included ads, with an apology and editorial from Gaines explaining about the rising costs of publishing and hoping fans would understand. I was disgusted, but ignored the ads (segregated to their own page) and found I enjoyed the rest of the magazine. It was a few days before Naif Boy realized the ads were fake.
My last issue (Mars Attacks! cover, not one laugh anywhere inside) was a while back, so I don’t know when ads started for real. I glanced at one at the newsstand a few months ago and, you guessed it, thought the corny looking Altoids and Corn-Nuts ads were fake. It was a bitter pill to swallow when Naif Boy caught on again. I take this as a sign of the pending apocalypse. Cats lying down with dogs, the loser of an election made president, ads in MAD. Pray for us.