Why did MAD Magazine Get So Blecched Out?

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TS BLECH! vs. BLECCH!

― Ken L (Ken L), Monday, 21 March 2005 20:55 (twenty years ago)

Well?

― Ken L (Ken L), Monday, 21 March 2005 20:55 (twenty years ago)

Turning 13 is a terrible thing.

― Huk-L, Monday, 21 March 2005 20:56 (twenty years ago)

I don't think I can say I've ever enjoyed MAD magazine whatsoever.

― nickalicious (nickalicious), Monday, 21 March 2005 20:57 (twenty years ago)

I bought the Dec '99 issue - "The 20th Century - Why It Sucked!" which showed several versions of A Newman (as a hippie, greaser, grunger, etc.)... I thought it might be of value someday.

― andy --, Monday, 21 March 2005 21:04 (twenty years ago)

Nickalicious, have you read any of the early stuff, in the fifties/sixties? A lot of it has to have been utterly contextual but it can still hold up.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Monday, 21 March 2005 21:05 (twenty years ago)

Because Don Martin left for Cracked.

― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Monday, 21 March 2005 21:06 (twenty years ago)

http://grandtextauto.gatech.edu/archives/aragones1.jpg

― Pleasant Plains /// (Pleasant Plains ///), Monday, 21 March 2005 21:07 (twenty years ago)

The Blecch Adder.

― Ken L (Ken L), Monday, 21 March 2005 21:11 (twenty years ago)

Blecch To The Future.

― Ken L (Ken L), Monday, 21 March 2005 21:14 (twenty years ago)

i've been poring over the reprints of the 50s daze, and they're truly wonderful. but it's my dad's 70-early 90s mad collection that made me that man i am today. i want to cry when i page through the copies i see today, but such is nostalgia and hi-gloss advertising.

― jermaine (jnoble), Monday, 21 March 2005 21:15 (twenty years ago)

Baby's Got Blecch.

― Ken L (Ken L), Monday, 21 March 2005 21:15 (twenty years ago)

Vintage MAD (ala Don Martin, Dave Berg's "The Lighter Side Of...", Sergio Argones, etc.) was total classic.

― Alex in NYC (vassifer), Monday, 21 March 2005 21:21 (twenty years ago)

Sadly, Mad magazine went the way of William Gaines. When he died, the soul of Mad went with him.

― Elvis Telecom (Chris Barrus), Monday, 21 March 2005 21:23 (twenty years ago)

It's actually pretty amazing that they lasted as long as they did without advertising, that's where most pubs get the largest share of revenue. And what was the cover - like sixty cents or something? How'd they manage to stay afloat? VOLUME.

― andy --, Monday, 21 March 2005 21:24 (twenty years ago)

"60 cents (CHEAP)" you mean

― Elvis Telecom (Chris Barrus), Monday, 21 March 2005 21:24 (twenty years ago)

I met Gaines once. I was thirteen. story here

― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Monday, 21 March 2005 21:29 (twenty years ago)

fact: Dan Clowes use to work for Cracked.

― amon (eman), Monday, 21 March 2005 21:34 (twenty years ago)

So whenever I forget to pay my rent for a few months and have to take a cashier's check in person to my "credit analyst," I travel to a building in midtown that apparently hosts the offices of both DC Comics and MAD Magazine. If there is a heaven for dogs, then this building is the heaven for ponytails and suede jackets. The MAD guys look to be in their mid-40s, but you can tell from their elevator banter and their ill-fitting jeans: the fourteen-year-old mindset is with them always.

― nabisco (nabisco), Monday, 21 March 2005 21:35 (twenty years ago)

xfuckingpost - used

― amon (eman), Monday, 21 March 2005 21:35 (twenty years ago)

xxpost:
TS Mort Drucker vs. John "O. O." Severin

― Ken L (Ken L), Monday, 21 March 2005 21:37 (twenty years ago)

Another reason why I'd like to see that NYC/"Simpsons" episode once again.

― Pleasant Plains /// (Pleasant Plains ///), Monday, 21 March 2005 21:38 (twenty years ago)

There was also Crazy for a while. Was that some Marvel thing?

― Ken L (Ken L), Monday, 21 March 2005 21:54 (twenty years ago)

Crazy had those great psychedelic board games inside sometimes.

― Silky Sensor (sexyDancer), Monday, 21 March 2005 21:55 (twenty years ago)

Crazy was a bit more hardcore than Mad or Cracked. They once had a graphic feature on how Casper the Friendly Boy became Casper the Friendly Ghost that really stuck with me.

― Pleasant Plains /// (Pleasant Plains ///), Monday, 21 March 2005 22:14 (twenty years ago)

You all do realize that the entire purpose of this thread was because I wanted to type "Blecched Out"?

― Ken L (Ken L), Monday, 21 March 2005 22:17 (twenty years ago)

original comic book version of MAD written by harvey kurtzman = funniest comic book in world history

― J.D. (Justyn Dillingham), Tuesday, 22 March 2005 06:54 (twenty years ago)

Not that I'm going to worry about this.

― mark grout (mark grout), Tuesday, 22 March 2005 14:38 (twenty years ago)

Because of this thread I picked up the current copy of Mad and thumbed through it. "Repeat the Fock-Ups" was HYSTERICAL. I was laughing out loud in the bookstore. The other stuff was not so great. I used to think that formula was reversed actually, as a kid I always looked forward to the strange interstitial stuff much more.

― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Tuesday, 22 March 2005 15:49 (twenty years ago)

I loved MAD when I was younger, though I was only able to get the slightly crap British edition in newsagents, which had ultra-American features nonsensically converted into British versions - such as mentions of Johnny Carson being changed to Terry Wogan or whatever, and in the process making the joke meaningless. You did occasionally get proper homegrown material, of which I remember a parody of Blue Peter (Mark Curry/Yvette Fielding/Gloria Hunniford's daughter era).

― Chriddof (Chriddof), Tuesday, 22 March 2005 15:58 (twenty years ago)

Oh yeah, I also think that the very early MAD stuff by Kurtzman is superb, but I've only ever been able to read it in the awkward format of those paperbacks with one strip per page. Is there a proper book of comic size-dimensions you can get featuring this material?

― Chriddof (Chriddof), Tuesday, 22 March 2005 16:00 (twenty years ago)

yeah, i'd love to see those stories the way they were meant to be seen - MAD isn't MAD when you shrink it down to paperback-size and print it in muddy black and white. DC is supposed to be reprinting them all in color but only the first one is out so far, and they're taking forever with the rest. i think there are some older reprints (same with kurtzman's war stories) but they're hella expensive.

― J.D. (Justyn Dillingham), Wednesday, 23 March 2005 11:01 (twenty years ago)

There's always the mega-CD set of every Mad Magazine ever, but I don't think it's available except over eBay.

― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Wednesday, 23 March 2005 15:13 (twenty years ago)

Mad was the first place I heard about punk rock, in 1977. The music industry take-down a few years back was great. Somehow it has stayed funny for kids while National Lampoon has been more or less eclipsed by The Onion/The Daily Show/etc.

― Pete Scholtes, Wednesday, 23 March 2005 15:14 (twenty years ago)

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0006J0HVC/qid%3D1111637277/sr%3D11-1/ref%3Dsr%5F11%5F1/103-7558232-3214264
Seventy bucks! For every issue!

― Forksclovetofu (Forksclovetofu), Thursday, 24 March 2005 04:08 (twenty years ago)

Johny Turd & The Commodes vs Calvin & The Cannibals

― dave q (listerine), Thursday, 24 March 2005 04:11 (twenty years ago)

the mega-CD set of every Mad Magazine ever

my brothers got me this for my birthday a couple years ago. it doesn't feel right reading them on the screen, but still - invaluable, really.

― jermaine (jnoble), Thursday, 24 March 2005 09:56 (twenty years ago)

five months pass...

Fuck, I've got that Totally MAD set! I don't know where it is but it wouldn't be too difficult to find it. We never got rid of it, surely.

― Ian Riese-Moraine: Let this bastard out, and you'll get whiplash! (Eastern Mantr, Monday, 19 September 2005 20:39 (twenty years ago)

potrzebie to thread

― Austin Still (Austin, Still), Monday, 19 September 2005 21:06 (twenty years ago)

three weeks pass...

http://www.collectmad.com/madcoversite/index-covers.html

― Wiggy (Wiggy), Tuesday, 11 October 2005 16:25 (twenty years ago)

Don Martin left for CRACKED!?!

― Fritz Wollner (Fritz), Tuesday, 11 October 2005 17:55 (twenty years ago)

haha fritz where have you been??

― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Tuesday, 11 October 2005 21:28 (twenty years ago)

So it's true then? Man, that sucks.

― Fritz Wollner (Fritz), Wednesday, 12 October 2005 02:35 (twenty years ago)

Dan Clowes used to work for Cracked. He did a strip called the Uggly Family.

― amon (eman), Wednesday, 12 October 2005 03:01 (twenty years ago)

dan clowes is no don martin.

― Fritz Wollner (Fritz), Wednesday, 12 October 2005 03:36 (twenty years ago)

fortunately.

― amon (eman), Wednesday, 12 October 2005 04:14 (twenty years ago)

two years pass...

Article on Al Jaffe and the fold-in under the Art & Design rubric in today's Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/30/arts/design/30genz.html?ex=1207540800&en=3f8dc6ba3a89abe2&ei=5070 Don't forget the interactive feature.

― James Redd and the Blecchs, Sunday, 30 March 2008 14:06 (seventeen years ago)

nat'l lampoon did a parody of Mad at some point that left me helpless

"you know you're too old for Mad when...you begin to find a richer source of humor in everyday things, like rocks."

― J0hn D., Sunday, 30 March 2008 14:18 (seventeen years ago)

I would have expected to see that in Mad.

― libcrypt, Sunday, 30 March 2008 18:01 (seventeen years ago)

I saw it on the other Mad thread, when J0hn posted it there.

― James Redd and the Blecchs, Sunday, 30 March 2008 21:13 (seventeen years ago)

nine months pass...

Sigh... (via Evan Dorkin)

We just received a letter from the folks at Mad detailing changes at the magazine -- namely, Mad will now be a quarterly (albeit a larger-sized publication), Mad Kids and Classics are folding, and several staffers were laid off. This wasn't just bad news because of our possibly losing a client or work, I feel really bad about the troubles the magazine, as well as the publishing world, is going through, and this just brought it home. I know that Diamond's recently released policy changes will affect us more, SLG relies heavily on re-lists, and the small press will be crippled, further, by the new minimums, but the comic industry has always been, as Dan Vado put it, "built on jelly", and I've been here for almost 20 years making minimal to moderate comic book money, so this comes as little surprise. But I wasn't aware of how bad magazine distribution has become, and a venerable magazine like Mad, a comic but in some ways never thought of as a comic, well, seeing it take a gutshot like this shakes one up. Or at least me. There are people who live off their Mad income, we're not one of those, and I can see this affecting a lot of freelancers who relied on 12 issues of material for their income. There's going to be less room for folks like us, who came to the party late, and have less of a track record, but hopefully we'll still pick up a gig here and there. I hope the new plan works out alright and Mad can stay on the shelves for a good while longer, there's still a large fan base there, but publishing is just so squeezed. Jeez.

(obv. this is more of a problem with The Current State Of Publishing than Mad, but still... Blecch)

― Chris Barrus (Elvis Telecom), Saturday, 24 January 2009 00:40 (seventeen years ago)

ouch

― Courtney Love's Jew Loan Officer (Shakey Mo Collier), Saturday, 24 January 2009 00:43 (seventeen years ago)

The NYT article linked above, about the fold-ins, is pure gold, and yes, be sure to do the interactive feature, it's quite well-done!

― Doctor Casino, Saturday, 24 January 2009 02:16 (seventeen years ago)

twelve years pass...

nat'l lampoon did a parody of Mad at some point that left me helpless
"you know you're too old for Mad when...you begin to find a richer source of humor in everyday things, like rocks."
― J0hn D., Monday, March 31, 2008 1:18 AM (thirteen years ago)

The Dave Berg parody has been passed around a lot -

https://i.imgur.com/AUGCvoy.jpg

- but here's a presumably significant chunk of the NatLamp parody. Some all-star contribs, eg Ralph Reese on the fold-in, and the best piece is probably the Colon-drawn Citizen Gaines, which manages to both be a successful Citizen Kane parody and to clearly & savagely take down the formula of Feldstein-era MAD.

― armoured van, Holden (sic), Saturday, 3 April 2021 02:20 (four years ago)

Nice

― It Is Dangerous to Meme Inside (James Redd and the Blecchs), Saturday, 3 April 2021 03:12 (four years ago)

one year passes...

In Cold Blecch:

https://ratedblecch.blogspot.com/2022/03/in-cold-blecch.html?fbclid=IwAR21USmFjVgCx_y4sHrBgly3jVyga1wr_Gpq3w85-L3C0l9cSSEOwNTkHG4

― Ward Fowler, Monday, 4 April 2022 09:56 (three years ago)

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