Mad Magazine

St. James Encyclopedia of Pop Culture, Jan 29, 2002 by Preston Neal Jones

In 1955 MAD became a magazine, and Al Feldstein became its editor, following disputes between Kurtzman and Gaines. (Kurtzman went on to a long and eventually profitable association with Hugh Hefner.) As a magazine, MAD proved more popular than ever. Gracing its covers--usually painted by Kelly Freas--was the magazine's gap-toothed mascot, Alfred E. Neumann, aka the "What, Me Worry?" kid. The magazine continued to print comics and movie parodies, but added guest contributions from such media notables as Ernie Kovacs, Bob and Ray, Jean Shepherd, and Danny Kaye. Nevertheless, the heart of the magazine was the material contributed by its staff writers, referred to on the masthead as "the usual gang of idiots." Anything on the American scene, from commerce to culture, was fair game. A parody of the latest hit movie might be juxtaposed with a MAD visit to the new phenomenon called Super Markets. The magazine was filled with ads--none of them real, except the ones for MAD T-shirts and subscriptions. MAD's policy of never accepting advertising bolstered its position as gadfly and debunker. When Salem Cigarettes, for example, had a slew of magazine and TV ads featuring young lovers in pastel, pastoral settings, MAD made its own pastel pastorale, in which a young couple was floating their "Sailem" cigarette packs on the burbling brook; the headline: "Sail 'em--don't inhale 'em!" Peppering each issue of MAD would be such nonsense words and catch phrases as "potrzebie," "I had one grunch but the eggplant over there," and "It's crackers to slip a rozzer the dropsy in snide." When one reader's letter begged MAD to explain this last sentence, MAD's editor helpfully replied: "'It's crackers to slip a rozzer the dropsy in snide' is good advice."

MAD's general tone of lunacy and irreverence proved infectious. To defend itself against a MAD-corrupted generation which had learned to be cynical about marketing ploys, Madison Avenue gradually came to produce more and more ads and commercials which were funny on purpose. It might not be a stretch to consider that those same ad-wary youngsters also grew up to take with a grain of salt the pronouncements of politicians--particularly those politicians who were trying to put those youngsters into uniform and pack them off to Vietnam.

If The New Yorker had the dark humor of Charles Addams, MAD had its "maddest artist," Don Martin, whose bizarre fantasies with lantern-jawed, flexible-footed figures have become a staple of the magazine, as has Sergio Aragones' "Spy vs. Spy." Considering the primacy of cartooning to MAD, it is curious and perhaps unfortunate that no attempt has ever been made to replicate the magazine as an animated film. MAD's venture into the movies, Up the Academy, was an embarrassing would-be imitation of Animal House. On the other hand, an earlier project for the stage, The MAD Show, was a success in New York and on tour, and has been cited as a precursor to the Laugh-In television series. Certainly some of the "mad" spirit has been invested into the Saturday Night Live show, and MAD TV. MAD has permeated American popular culture in many unexpected ways, even appearing on one of Fred Astaire's celebrated TV specials, in which Astaire danced a duet with Barrie Chase while wearing an Alfred E. Neumann mask. Even without Kurtzman and Gaines, MAD continued to be popular at the end of the twentieth century, delighting new generations of youngsters who eventually grow up--unlike MAD, the perpetual adolescent of periodicals.