“Making the cover of Rolling Stone was nice, but I didn’t feel meaningful until I made the cover of Mad Magazine!'"
- Little Steven Van Zandt, actor and musician
It was inevitable. In a world where late night comedians and weekly cartoonists try their best to sound funny but fail miserably when all they can do is hurl tiresome insults at figures who aren't in line with their own views, a magazine whose success was based on a more tempered content was eventually bound to fail.
Emerging in 1952 from the "low-brow" world of comic books, it evolved into a full-sized magazine that poked fun at just about everything. It was hard to call "classy" but MAD was just that, and for quite a long while at that. Shepherded by a goofy-looking mascot by the name of Alfred E. Neuman and with each issue produced by the "usual gang of idiots", MAD was loaded with satire that was humorous and irreverent, but was never distasteful or stepped completely "over the line". That is, until DC Comics bought it and turned it into something that was only occasionally funny. There was also no disguising which side of the political fence they stood on, and the mean-spirited assault was almost as relentless as that from television and news media. Honestly, when you have a 128-page fusillade aimed at the President with an introduction by CNN's Jake Tapper, can the message be any clearer?
It begs the question: "Where have all the humorists gone?" Where are the Harvey Kurtzman's, the Al Feldstein's, the Mort Drucker's, the Don Martin's? Why, they're dead, Jim, and for all intents and purposes, so is MAD after its August 2019 issue. DC is pulling the plug and flushing a beloved tradition down the drain that might have been better done before now.
To be truthful, MAD won't be going away entirely. It is rumored that only new material will cease and only reprints of "classic" content will be published hereafter from its 67-year history. In other words, DC will only be publishing reprint material from earlier times when it was really funny.
You nailed it! In its heyday, even the libertines at NATIONAL LAMPOON would skewer the left/Democrats for their self-righteousness and hypocrisy. No one side got off scot-free. MAD used to follow suit, but as you noted, is now fully ingrained in the demonization and finger-wagging lecture aspects of modern-day "comedy". Bring on the reprints!
ReplyDeleteMad magazine & Monty Python at a young age pretty much formed my sense of humor. A few years back I pulled out my old Mads & reread them. I was struck by the fact that you could take current personalities & superimpose them over the old Mad targets & the jokes were still relevant. How does that saying go? The more things change the more they stay the same. I gave the new incarnation a try but it just wasn't very funny. (Except the Halloween issue which, y'know, was Halloweeny). While I am, by no means, a Trump acolyte, continual jokes about one target flatten quickly. It's extinction was probably inevitable once Gaines was gone. It probably lasted this long on its reputation.
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