Posted on 05/05/2019 1:08:15 PM PDT by Sean_Anthony
Reading MAD is one thing, allowing yourself to live in it is quite another
I admit, I occasionally read Mad magazine as a kid. Every feature in it was strange and weird. I was transported to a parallel world of the absurd, the nonsensical. That was, I suppose, part of the attraction. I know I didn’t join their ranks because, in spite of the entertainment value, I still, even now, think it was weird. Not so for millions of others.
I scan about 50 or 60 news articles a week, mostly to keep in touch with what is going on in order to sound intelligent when I write my own articles. The problem today is I sometimes feel like I’m living in a Mad magazine.
My first encounter was in Ayer, MA. Leaving Ft. Devin’s on a weekend pass, I picked up my first MAD Magazine at the news stand before boarding the train headed south. I laughed all the way to Philly. Haven’t seen one in decades.
Like most of my peers, I soaked in Mad Magazine as a teen, advanced to National Lampoon, but unlike most, I went on to top out with the Journal of Irreproducible Results. Haven’t had a decent laugh since.
I remember super duper man April-May 1953
Jack Davis did some fantastic art for Mad Magazine back in the ‘50s and ‘60s. Like the one you posted, he did a several page panel of the Real vs the TV Wild West. It was right on the money.
“I scan about 50 or 60 news articles a week, mostly to keep in touch with what is going on in order to sound intelligent when I write my own articles.”
Wonder what he means by “scan.” I read at least 50-60 news articles every day.
Mad Magazine was funny and so was Cracked...I used to read it all the time. Some times I thought it was over the top, but it is funny.
Mad Magazine was SNL before SNL.
those margin cartoons were always my favorite part
It would appear that he hasn’t looked at a MAD lately.
My sister got me a subscription last Christmas as I
loved it when a kid. Now it is a vile propaganda rag
with poor writing and lousy illustration, filled with
Trump haters.
I usually just scan them and throw them in the trash.
If I had a cat, I wouldn’t even use them to line his
litter box. He’d be so offended he would probably hurt me.
Mad Magazine today is SNL today.
As they would say, “Blech!”.
Liberals ruin everything.
Agreed. Mad used to be funny, they pilloried every
social convention, now it’s liberal,PC, and has no
humor in it.
Even the art work is just a pale shadow of what it once
was.
Awful English by Mad... “seeked”? It should be sought...
Al Jafee is one of my life long artistic and literary heros. “Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions” was one of my favorite paperbacks.
In ’64, at the age of 9, I discovered Mad Magazine. For the next 7 years or so it was no less than obsession. I lost them all somewhere during the business of adulthood. Getting ready to leave my 30-somethings, still the cliche liberal in every sense ... I questioned if it had molded my cynicism, would I have been better off to never have discovered the madness. To rest in sufferance smiling for acceptance beggarly from those prancing court jesters adorned in caps & balls.
It was a few years later I bought them in bulk, possess most from the 60s & 70s, a few before and after. They were right, irreverence is not only healthy but crucial. Where check and balances are born. Any other option tastes like submission, the cook steep seasoned with cowardice.
Haven’t read any of them for approaching 20 years and might not again. My education is complete, Summa Cum Laude. The foundation poured discreetly from those giggling early years. In all those pages of all those years you’ll find nothing as ridiculous or dangerous as the headlines today that liberals defile. I’m afraid we’ve graduated from Mad.
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