Mad (magazine)

• 1. A Face Without An Address

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  Mad magazine once received a letter whose envelope carried no address and no name, only a drawing of a gap-toothed boy's face. The United States mail delivered it anyway. According to Mad writer Frank Jacobs, the face alone did the job. That boy is Alfred E. Neuman, the figure with misaligned eyes and the motto "What, me worry?" His grin appears on the cover of an American humor magazine that has mocked politicians, advertisers, movie studios and even its own readers. Its fans include a member of Monty Python, a producer of The Simpsons, a famous film critic and a rock singer. Its opponents have included powerful music publishers and a film studio's lawyers. How did a comic book turn into a magazine that taught a generation to distrust what it was told? Why did its publisher turn down advertising money for decades? And why do readers keep insisting it was funnier when they were young?

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• 2. Comic Book Origins

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  Mad went on sale in August 1952 as a comic book from EC, with a cover date of October-November. Harvey Kurtzman wrote almost all of the first issue. He shared the drawing with Wally Wood, Will Elder, Jack Davis and John Severin. Wood, Elder and Davis remained the main illustrators across all 23 comic-book issues. The office stood in lower Manhattan, at 225 Lafayette Street.

  In 1955, with issue No. 24, Mad became a magazine. The reason was Kurtzman. William Gaines said in 1992 that Kurtzman had received a lucrative offer from Pageant magazine. Gaines, who by his own admission knew nothing about publishing magazines, answered by letting Kurtzman change the format. Gaines insisted the switch was not made to dodge the Comics Code. As a result of it, though, Mad did escape the Code. The concession bought only one more year of Kurtzman's work.

  After Kurtzman left in 1956, Al Feldstein took over and quickly recruited Don Martin, Frank Jacobs and Mort Drucker. Antonio Prohias, Dave Berg and Sergio Aragones arrived later. Circulation more than quadrupled under Feldstein and peaked at 2,132,655 in 1974. By the end of his time as editor, it had fallen to a third of that figure.

  The release calendar was just as odd as the name. At first, issues appeared anywhere from four to nine times a year. By the end of 1958, Mad had settled on eight issues annually, a rhythm that lasted almost four decades. Each issue went on sale 7 to 9 weeks before the month printed on its cover. Gaines believed the strange timing protected quality. The schedule finally became monthly with issue No. 353, dated January 1997.

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• 3. In The Courts

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  In 1961, music publishers representing Irving Berlin, Richard Rodgers and Cole Porter filed a $25 million copyright lawsuit against Mad. The target was "Sing Along With Mad", a collection of parody lyrics meant to be sung to the tune of popular songs. The publishers hoped to establish that only a song's composers could parody it. In 1963, Judge Charles Metzner ruled largely for Mad, allowing 23 of the 25 disputed parodies. He wanted a trial on two, "Always" and "There's No Business Like No Business", because they borrowed the same verbal hooks as the originals.

  The appeals court went further. Writing for the Second Circuit, Judge Irving Kaufman remarked, "We doubt that even so eminent a composer as plaintiff Irving Berlin should be permitted to claim a property interest in iambic pentameter." The Supreme Court declined to hear the publishers' appeal. The 1964 result confirmed that parodists could imitate the meter of popular songs.

  A second fight began in 1966 over the boy on the cover. Mad had first printed his face in November 1954. He took his first full-cover turn in issue No. 30, dated December 1956, as a named write-in candidate for president. Harry Stuff had copyrighted the image in 1914. The appeals court found that Stuff let many copies circulate without a copyright notice, which put the picture in the public domain. Mad also produced older examples dating to the late 19th century, showing that Stuff had not created it.

  Some disputes ended far more cheaply. After Mad parodied The Empire Strikes Back, lawyers for George Lucas demanded that the issue be recalled and the printing plates destroyed. They did not know that Lucas himself had already written to Mad, delighted, calling artist Mort Drucker and writer Dick DeBartolo "the Leonardo da Vinci and George Bernard Shaw of comic satire." Gaines copied that letter, scrawled "Gee, your boss George liked it!" across the top, and mailed it to the lawyers. DeBartolo recalled, "We never heard from them again."

  Mad later joined other parties in filing a friend-of-the-court brief with the Supreme Court. It backed 2 Live Crew in the 1993 case Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc.

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• 4. No Ads Allowed

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  Beginning with issue No. 33, dated June 1957, Mad stopped carrying outside advertising. That policy lasted through issue No. 404 in April 2001, making it the most successful American magazine ever to publish without ads. Before that, the comic book had run the same advertisements as the rest of EC's line. For its first two years as a magazine, Mad ran a few ads, each labeled "real advertisement" so readers could tell them from the parodies. The last genuine one was for Famous Artists School. Issue No. 34 then ran a parody of that same ad on its inside front cover.

  The ban was not unanimous inside the office. Kurtzman and Feldstein both wanted advertising and believed it would not compromise the humor. Kurtzman remembered Ballyhoo, a 1930s humor magazine that mocked its own sponsors. Feldstein proposed an in-house Mad ad agency and even produced a dummy issue showing how ads might look.

  Gaines refused. He told the television program 60 Minutes, "We long ago decided we couldn't take money from Pepsi-Cola and make fun of Coca-Cola." His private reasoning was more practical. Advertisers want color and glossy paper, which forces a more expensive magazine. If the advertisers later leave, readers still expect the fancy package and the money is gone.

  The rule had loopholes only for the magazine's own goods. House ads promoted Mad books, specials, subscriptions, ceramic busts, T-shirts and a line of jewelry. Mad also promised never to make its mailing list available.

  Paid advertising finally arrived in issue No. 404, and the money paid for color printing and better paper. Contributor Tom Richmond answered critics who said Gaines would turn over in his grave. That is impossible, he noted, because Gaines was cremated.

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• 5. The Usual Gang

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  More than 960 people have received a byline in Mad, according to one contributor-tracking website. Only 41 of them appeared in 100 issues or more. Al Jaffee appeared in the most issues, and issue No. 550, dated April 2018, was the 500th to carry new work by him. Sergio Aragones, Dick DeBartolo and Mort Drucker each topped 400 issues. The magazine billed its regulars as "The Usual Gang of Idiots," and several enjoyed careers of 30, 40 or even 50 years.

  Money was not the only glue. Gaines typically wrote a personal check and handed it over when an artist delivered finished work. Wally Wood said, "I got spoiled... Other publishers don't do that." Wood added, "I started to get upset if I had to wait a whole week for my check."

  The annual Mad Trip, an all-expenses-paid outing that began in 1960, was another lure. Staff were invited automatically. Freelancers had to earn a place by selling a set number of articles or pages in the previous year. Gaines enforced the quota strictly. One year, writer Arnie Kogen missed it and was dropped from the list. When Gaines' mother died later that year, Kogen was asked if he would attend the funeral. "I can't," he said, "I don't have enough pages." The group traveled to places including France, Kenya, Russia, Hong Kong, Tahiti and Morocco. The tradition ended after Gaines died in 1992 and a 1993 trip to Monte Carlo.

  Guests added surprises. Richard Nixon is the only president credited with writing a Mad article, though the whole text was lifted from his speeches. In the early years, Mad adapted radio sketches by Bob and Ray. Editors then tracked down the writer, Tom Koch, who went on to write more than 300 Mad articles over 37 years.

  In 2008, one piece drew national coverage because each of its 10 punchlines was illustrated by a different Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist. In 2015, Weird Al Yankovic became the magazine's first and only guest editor, guiding issue No. 533. His own byline total rose from two to five.

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• 6. Raised On Mad

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  Writing in 1977, Tony Hiss and Jeff Lewis argued in The New York Times that Mad shaped a skeptical generation of kids in the 1950s. They linked that generation to opposing a war in the 1960s and helping push out an administration in the 1970s. In their account, Mad showed kids they were not alone in sensing something phony about a world of bomb shelters and toothpaste smiles. Its parodies even had comic-strip characters realize they were trapped in a strip.

  Activist Tom Hayden said, "My own radical journey began with Mad Magazine." Art Spiegelman summed up the message as "The media is lying to you, and we are part of the media." Terry Gilliam of Monty Python wrote, "Mad became the Bible for me and my whole generation." Artist Dave Gibbons went further, saying that "the letters M-A-D were probably as influential as L-S-D."

  Gibbons also credited Mad with practical lessons. He said Watchmen, which he made with writer Alan Moore, borrowed storytelling tricks Kurtzman perfected in Mad. One example was holding a background constant while characters walk across it.

  For performers, an appearance in Mad meant arrival. In 1985, Johnny Carson asked Michael J. Fox on The Tonight Show when he knew he had made it. Fox replied, "When Mort Drucker drew my head." Jerry Seinfeld recalled reading it and thinking, "These people don't respect anything." That, he said, exploded his head. Patti Smith put it more briefly: "After Mad, drugs were nothing."

  Critic Roger Ebert wrote, "I learned to be a movie critic by reading Mad magazine." He said its parodies exposed how a film could look original outside while recycling the same formulas inside. Comics historian Tom Spurgeon went further, writing that at its peak Mad was The Simpsons, The Daily Show and The Onion combined. Simpsons producer Bill Oakley said his show had transplanted Mad, and that anyone young between 1955 and 1975 got their sense of humor from it.

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• 7. Fading Or Changing

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  Circulation fell below one million for the first time in 1983, and many of the magazine's mainstays were retiring or dying by that decade. Critics blamed Mad for leaning too long on a core group of aging regulars. When those regulars left, critics complained about a downturn. Fans have named many turning points. They include Kurtzman's exit, Gaines' death in 1992, a publicized "edgy revamp" on the 1st of April 1997, the arrival of ads in 2001, and the 2018 move to California.

  The defenders are blunt. Sergio Aragones said in 2010 that readers who say Mad has changed should realize they have grown up. Art director Sam Viviano suggested in 2002 that Mad was at its best "whenever you first started reading it." Joe Raiola joked, "Mad is the only place in America where if you mature, you get fired." Al Jaffee identified a different problem in 2010. Mad's graduates now work on Saturday Night Live and for Stephen Colbert, so, he said, "Mad is almost in a competition with itself." Editor John Ficarra added that satire had grown harder. His magazine's mission, "Everyone is lying to you, including magazines. Think for yourself. Question authority," had not changed, but liars had learned to join the joke.

  Ownership changed far more often than the mission. Gaines sold his company in 1961 to Premier Industries, a maker of venetian blinds. Around 1964, Premier sold Mad to Independent News, a division of the company that published DC Comics. Mergers then carried it into the Warner corporate family. After Gaines died, the magazine became more embedded in Time Warner. Around the mid-1990s, it left its old home at 485 Madison Avenue for DC's offices.

  In November 2017, Rolling Stone wrote that "operating under the cover of barf jokes, Mad has become America's best political satire magazine." Weeks later, Mad ended its 65-year New York run with issue No. 550, dated April 2018. It moved to DC Entertainment's base in Burbank, California, under new editor Bill Morrison. None of the New York staff made the move. More than a hundred new names debuted, and the first California issue was renumbered "#1." In 2019, the rebooted magazine won its first two Eisner Award nominations. After AT&T acquired Time Warner in June 2018, Morrison was gone by March 2019. After issue No. 11 in February 2020, Mad turned mostly to curated reprints. Newsstand sales ended. Barnes & Noble began carrying compilation issues called The Treasure Trove of Trash in 2022.

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• 8. Beyond The Page

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  In 1959, bandleader Bernie Green recorded the album Musically Mad for RCA Victor, with Alfred E. Neuman on the cover. It was nominated for a Grammy. In the early 1960s came two full LPs, Mad "Twists" Rock 'N' Roll in 1962 and Fink Along With Mad in 1963. Songs from them were bound into issues as flexi discs. The last turntable-playable recording packaged with the magazine arrived in a 1982 special.

  The Mad Show opened Off-Broadway in 1966 and ran for 871 performances. Stan Hart and Larry Siegel wrote the sketches, and one song came from an uncredited Stephen Sondheim. In 1979, Mad released a board game in which the first player to go bankrupt won. It included a $1,329,063 bill that nobody could win unless their name was "Alfred E. Neuman."

  Not every venture pleased the magazine. Mad lent its name to the 1980 comedy Up the Academy, a commercial and critical disaster. The magazine arranged to remove its name and Neuman's cameo from later TV and video releases. In 1974, ABC commissioned an animated pilot that never aired. DeBartolo explained that nobody wanted to sponsor a show mocking products advertised on television, such as cars.

  The Fox sketch show Mad TV licensed the magazine's logo and characters in 1995, though it had no editorial link to the magazine. It ran for 14 seasons and 321 episodes. Cartoon Network aired a separate animated Mad series for four seasons and 103 episodes starting in 2010. In 1984, the Spy vs. Spy characters began a video game series about setting traps for each other.

  Foreign editions began with the United Kingdom in 1959 and Sweden in 1960. Many were short-lived, because American humor did not always translate. Australia's lasted 42 years, the United Kingdom's 35 and Sweden's 34. When a comic strip about the British royal family appeared in a Mad paperback, staff had to rip the page out of 25,000 copies by hand before the book could ship to Britain.

  The success also bred rivals. Cracked, Sick and Crazy Magazine were the longest-lasting, and each carried a cover mascot much like Neuman. In 1967, Marvel Comics launched Not Brand Echh, which ran for 13 issues. On the 4th of June 2024, DC Comics published a facsimile of Mad #1 that even reprinted the original advertisements.

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