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Thread: Mad magazine has left the building

  1. #26
    Marklar Jimmy Giant's Avatar
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    MAD and Monty Python crafted me into the fine individual I am today!!!
    Dumb meetings still get my Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions.

    RIP Alfred E Newman, it is a sad day indeed.
    JG

    "MARKLAR!"

  2. #27
    Man of repute progmatist's Avatar
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    In junior high, around the '77-'79 time frame, one fad at my school was drawing like Don Martin.
    "Well my son, life is like a beanstalk, isn't it?"--Dalai Lama

  3. #28
    "The White Zone is for loading and unloading only. If you got to load or unload go to the White Zone!"

  4. #29
    Member dropforge's Avatar
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    The announcement of the sorta-kinda-cancellation of MAD Magazine the other day hit me like a hard foam brick, they kind used in westerns and actioners. They're still going to keep "publishing" it, with reprints and new covers. But that's not the same (duh).

    In grade school, there was a micro (as in three of us) "clan," and between us we tried to buy all the MAD paperbacks we'd see, anywhere. My friend David got the most. I wasn't as lucky convincing the, ah, "stepmom" to plunk down whenever we were in line picking up cereal. We'd get all the MAD Super Specials and monthlies. One great one was MAD '84 with the black cover and sweet metallic font. It may or may not have been a left-field nod to Heavy Metal.

    mad84.jpg

    One of my favorite parodies was "Cattlecar Galaxica."

    I reread Dave Berg's "The Lighter Side of" and anything Al Jaffee, Antonio Prohias and Sergio Aragonés did 1000's of times!

  5. #30
    Member dropforge's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by progmatist View Post
    In junior high, around the '77-'79 time frame, one fad at my school was drawing like Don Martin.
    Dude! Same here! Just make it grade school.

  6. #31
    Member dropforge's Avatar
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    Anyone notice the Spy Vs. Spy Omnibus is going for a LOT!

    I ordered this hardcover last week, new, for under $50 shipped.


  7. #32
    Quote Originally Posted by 3LockBox View Post
    I remember back in the '80s just as the Jacksons were embarking on their first major tour in 5 or 6 years when MAD did a cover spoof, MAD Magazine Salutes: The Jacksons! which features Michael up front flanked by Jesse on bass, Andrew on lead guitar and Kate on drums. I think Reggie was doing tambourine or something like that.
    Yeah, I remember that. That was around the time of 1984 Victory tour. I also remember them doing a parody of the cover of Bruce Springsteen's Live 75-85 boxset, with Alfred E Neumann in Bruce's place.

    I was just thinking about their version of the civil servant exams. The one for postal worker had questions like, "You have a long line at your post office you window. You:
    A. Take a lunch break
    B. Engage a customer in a conversation about basketball
    C. Work slower
    D. None of the above

    The one for bus driver had questions like "You should call the street names:
    A. Under your breath
    B. Out of order
    C. Very quickly
    D. Not at all

  8. #33
    A personal favorite. I bought a clean copy a few years ago. What a hoot!

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  9. #34
    Jazzbo manqué Mister Triscuits's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by ronmac View Post
    A personal favorite. I bought a clean copy a few years ago. What a hoot!

    It was a little disappointing that this stuff was not in that huge slipcased Don Martin collection.
    Hurtleturtled Out of Heaven - an electronic music composition, on CD and vinyl
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  10. #35
    Man of repute progmatist's Avatar
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    My initiation to the Star Wars universe was the Mad Magazine parody of it. I was perhaps the only kid in my school who never actually saw A New Hope when it first came out. My parents had some kind of weird reasons why our family shouldn't see the movie. I never actually saw it, or The Empire Strikes Back until around '84/'85 on VHS. The only movie I saw in the Theater when it came out was The Return of the Jedi.
    "Well my son, life is like a beanstalk, isn't it?"--Dalai Lama

  11. #36
    Jazzbo manqué Mister Triscuits's Avatar
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    One of many, many Mad parodies I read before experiencing the original:

    I wandered lonely as a clod,
    Just picking up old rags and bottles,
    When onward on my way I plod,
    I saw a host of axolotls;
    Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
    A sight to make a man’s blood freeze.

    Some had handles, some were plain;
    They came in blue, red, pink and green.
    A few were orange in the main;
    The damnedest sight I’ve ever seen.
    The females gave a sprightly glance;
    The male ones all wore knee-length pants.

    Now oft, when on the couch I lie,
    The doctor asks me what I see.
    They flash upon my inward eye
    And make me laugh in fiendish glee.
    I find my solace then in bottles,
    And I forget them axolotls.
    Hurtleturtled Out of Heaven - an electronic music composition, on CD and vinyl
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  12. #37
    Estimated Prophet notallwhowander's Avatar
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    Oh, and Don Matrin's sound effects are without peer.
    Wake up to find out that you are the eyes of the world.

  13. #38
    Schplonk!
    I'm not lazy. I just work so fast I'm always done.

  14. #39
    Member Lopez's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Mister Triscuits View Post
    And I forget them axolotls.
    See, this is why Mad was great. Probably the only poem in the world with the word axolotls in it and rhyming to boot.

    I used to love the Horrifying Cliches. Some of them took me a while to figure out, but when I did, they were priceless.

    One movie satire that I'll never forgot was of The Summer of '42, The Trauma of '42, drawn by Mort Drucker. The caricatures of the three kids were hilarious. And Wormie, if I remember his name correctly, marries the lady at the end and they grow old together; she a lot faster than him.
    Lou

    Looking forward to my day in court.

  15. #40
    Progdog ThomasKDye's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Lopez View Post
    All my favorites of the usual gang of idiots are gone—Dave Berg, Al Jaffee, Jack Davis, Mort Drucker, Don Martin, Sergio Argones.
    Unless you didn't mean "dead," Mort Drucker and Sergio Aragones are still with us. A friend of mine even sat with the latter at a comic convention!
    "Arf." -- Frank Zappa, "Beauty Knows No Pain" (live version)

  16. #41
    Member dgtlman's Avatar
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    I think I still have some of those Mad books from the 60s around somewhere. Spy vs. Spy was probably my favorite. Also, remember those little doodle comics on the page edges? They didn't miss anything, those guys!

  17. #42
    Jazzbo manqué Mister Triscuits's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by ThomasKDye View Post
    Unless you didn't mean "dead," Mort Drucker and Sergio Aragones are still with us.
    Al Jaffee too; he's been contributing the Fold-In in every issue for all these years.
    Hurtleturtled Out of Heaven - an electronic music composition, on CD and vinyl
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  18. #43
    Member Lopez's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Mister Triscuits View Post
    Al Jaffee too; he's been contributing the Fold-In in every issue for all these years.
    I meant mostly gone from the current pages of Mad. A couple years ago I read Al Jaffee's autobiography. Pretty interesting guy.
    Lou

    Looking forward to my day in court.

  19. #44
    I just learned that a friend of mine illustrated at least one of their covers.
    "The White Zone is for loading and unloading only. If you got to load or unload go to the White Zone!"

  20. #45
    I still treasure my copies of My Friend God and Roger Kaputnik and God both by Dave Berg!
    Cobra handling and cocaine use are a bad mix.

  21. #46
    To tie into this into "prog rock", Mort Drucker drew the cover of The Bears' first album. The Bears was the band Adrian Belew played in, during the late 80's. Drucker also did the back cover of Anthrax's State Of Euphoria album cover. I remember being at Sears or some place like that, and we were walking past the t-shirt department, and I saw an Anthrax shirt that had the piece on the front, and I remember telling my mom that it was done by one of the Mad artists, and she said, "Yeah, it looks like something from Mad magazine".

  22. #47
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    The end of an era. I had the first Mad comic, the first Mad magazine and most of them through the 70s, the flexi disk, the books, all of it. It was a big part of my childhood.

    The old EC comics were amazing and quite subversive and "out there" in the 50s, some of the other titles maybe even more so than Mad. In fact they were in danger of being banned and were the target of typical reactionary right-wing attack for "corrupting the minds of our youth" etc. It was quite a big deal and the major reason that EC (Educational Comics) abandoned the comic format in favor of an "adult" magazine. The original publisher, the great William F Gaines was called before the Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency.

    The superb, detailed art work and subversive, fearless approach continued intially in the early magazines, but then gradually was adulterated and toned-down, and particuarly after the passing of Mr. Gaines, it became a low-quality, lame-ass rag with mostly low-grade art bearing little resemblence to the quality, innovative, daring, subversive product that emerged in the 1950s.

  23. #48
    Quote Originally Posted by 3LockBox View Post
    Mad made me who I am today.
    Yup, got my first copy circa 1965 and couldn't get enough of it. My mom hated them of course. I bought my first MAD paperback book, "It's a World World World World Mad" and hid it but she found it and threw it out. I loved the song parodies and they inspired me to write many over the years although they were not for mass consumption, usually to poke fun at co-workers or bosses with lots of inside jokes that no one else would get. The art was always fantastic, especially Jack Davis.

    One thing I always wondered... since the magazine had no advertising, how did they make money? How did they pay the artists and writers?
    You say Mega Ultra Deluxe Special Limited Edition Extended Autographed 5-LP, 3-CD, 4-DVD, 2-BlueRay, 4-Cassette, five 8-Track, MP4 Download plus Demos, Outtakes, Booklet, T-Shirt and Guitar Pick Gold-Leafed Box Set Version like it's a bad thing...

  24. #49
    Member Lopez's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Garden Dreamer View Post
    One thing I always wondered... since the magazine had no advertising, how did they make money? How did they pay the artists and writers?
    Years ago I read a biography of Bill Gaines. All the money made was through subscription and rack sales. Subscribers got something like 25¢ off the total cover price for a year's subscription, so there was almost no incentive to subscribe other than not missing an issue. He had very few staff members. Most of the writers and artists were freelance contractors; therefore, there was little in the way of benefits to pay. Bill was generous to his writers and artists though with Christmas gifts and a yearly trip (no wives) to somewhere. One year they went to Haiti because Bill found that the only subscriber from there had not re-upped. So they found out where he lived and they all showed up unannounced at his house to convince him to resubscribe. He did.
    Lou

    Looking forward to my day in court.

  25. #50
    ^^That's hilarious!
    "The White Zone is for loading and unloading only. If you got to load or unload go to the White Zone!"

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