When I was a kid, I read every issue of MAD Magazine I could get my hands on. MAD was a wacky illustrated magazine that originally made fun of comic books. But over the years, MAD started making fun of EVERYTHING! This 60th Anniversary volume includes some of those early comic book critiques, but swiftly moves to the more snarky social commentary of TV shows and movies. This hefty volume charts the evolution of MAD humor over the decades. If you’re a fan of MAD this book is a must-buy. If you’re one of those people who always wondered what MAD was all about, look no further than this book!
The early (and the earliest) issues of MAD were works of comic genius; the later (and recent) issues — those of the “snarky social commentary” — I find to be (dare I say it?) bland, predictable, and unfunny. Alfred E. Neuman has grow up to be (like his look-alike Prince Charles) a stuffy old man. When I tried to read this book, I couldn’t get past the first few pages without a sense of sadness for what once was.
Jerry, I had the same experience with MAD. Great couple of decades early on, then a slow decline since the Eighties. But, there’s plenty of Good Stuff in this 60th Anniversary volume!
Like you, George, my brother and I read every issue of MAD in the ‘sixties. I think it helped shape our generation like other anti-establishment icons (like them or not): the Three Stooges, Soupy Sales, etc. I can still remember some of the riffs 50 years later.
I was a big fan of SPY VS. SPY, Jeff. MAD fueled the Counter-Culture back in the Sixties.
Sorry to admit, that MAD always eluded me. Much like THE THREE STOOGES and a very other things from that era. I have the feeling I was mostly interested in romance not satire at that time.
It helped to be a big reader of comic books in the early days of MAD, Patti.
I was on the verge of ordering it, but read some reviews. Yes, I know about A-zon reviews, but I read them anyway… and what I found was that this book only contains excerpts of the stories, not complete ones. There were also some complaints about the quality of the artwork reproduction. So I’ll sit tight.
I’m planning on buying a remainder copy, Rick. I read the Library copy for this review.
I have the 7-CD set, also called TOTALLY MAD, featuring every issue from 1952 to 1998, but it’s just not the same trying to read it on a computer monitor.
Evan, I own that 7-CD set, too. But, as you say, reading MAD on a computer screen isn’t as much fun as reading the magazine.
Evan, drop that puppy onto a flash drive for me!
Yeah, Harvey Kurtzman’s vision drove the original, best MAD, and while the magazine had better and worse periods afterward…I think that at its height in circulation, in the midst of Watergate, when I was reading my first new issues, it was doing better than it had been a few years before and better than the reflexive funk it would sink into and hasn’t ever recovered from…it was willing to provide some content that adults would enjoy in the mid-’70s, moreso than now, and it was somewhat less tired (the arrival of all its children, such as NATIONAL LAMPOON and the underground humor comix, probably helped). The first years after Kurtzman left weren’t Too shabby either, with much of the original crew still intact.
But Dave Berg always bit.
And there was also CRACKED Magazine that tried to be a MAD clone, but never had MAD’s zaniness, Todd.
Yes, CRACKED and CRAZY and SICK (probably the most durable direct imitators) never quite got the measure of Being MAD, though they strove mightily…early on, EC’s own PANIC was not quite in the same groove as MAD despite being able to draw on the same artist pool, with the crucial difference of Harvey Kurtzman at the original. Kurtzman’s own subsequent magazines, even with the limitations placed on MAD, might not’ve (koff) Trumped it, even if any of them but HELP! had been able to last any length of time, due to their own slightly different limitations…but I’d take the weakest issue of HELP! over nearly everything else other than the best issues of MAD mentioned above. When I was a kid, DC had PLOP! for a while, which was a little too in love with grotesquerie, but at least it wasn’t a bland, dull ripoff…and Marvel’s NOT BRAND ECCH! (while trying too hard beyond the title) was at least more creative than their CRAZY…
Did I mention that Dave Berg was always a sexist, agist bore? That hit home from my first exposure…
Wow, you bring back a lot of memories, Todd. I had forgotten about CRAZY, SICK, and PANIC. I never saw PLOP! or NOT BRAND ECCH!
And, sorry…that title was _Not Brand Echh_ (no exclamation point, two Hs)…but I barely saw that one, except in hand-me-downs my friends had, as it was slightly before my first full exposure to Marvel comics…
I see that CRAZY was launched as a reprint title of NOT BRAND ECHH material, then converted quickly into a b&w MAD imitator.
Thanks for that clarification, Todd.
I’ll have to check that out at some point, I remember reading Mad a lot when I was a kid. I glanced through an issue the other day at the store and it just wasn’t the same without the old artists that made the magazine special.
There’s a big difference between the old MAD and the latest edition of MAD, Carl. Like you, I miss the old artists and their zany wit.