Mad News

I keep meaning to get to the next post I have in mind, but I'm hip-deep in a time-consuming freelance project that keeps eating up my days and nights.

But when I saw this, I knew I had to share it immediately--seems like Mad has pissed Circuit City off so bad they banned it, at least temporarily.

Mad--still doing its job, for over fifty years.

Mad #492 - EC

Aug. 2008 - I was in the supermarket yesterday and I happened to cruise by the magazines, and there was a new Mad! Since I like to check in with everyone's Usual Gang of Idiots every so often, I picked it up--after all, how could I resist that cover?

Like I've mentioned before, I'm pleasantly surprised at some of the jokes Mad puts out nowadays--sure, some of it is purely juvenile and just makes me roll my eyes, but they do include some more thoughtful stuff that probably aims at just above their demographic, like this political stuff:

...sure, it's not exactly The Daily Show, but I give Mad credit for doing stuff like this at all. Plus, the Obama thing is referencing something probably a lot of their readers have never seen. When they come across it later in life, they can say "Hey, I remember I saw that in Mad!"

There's a fun segment called "Are You a Celebrity or a Celebutard?", a joke about Amish people (they don't care whose toes they step on!), "Mad's International Preview of the Beijing Olympics" (complete with jokes about political prisoners), and then a classic, Mad-style movie parody:

...this is a splash-page after my own heart. You've got Tony Stark, Bush, Halliburton, Lyndie England, Osama Bin Laden, and gas jokes all crammed into this tiny space. Nice job, artist Tom Richmond!

This parody also features appearances by The Thing, Batman, Peabody and Sherman, even Wall•E! A great parody.

After "10 Ways to Beat High Gas Prices", we have another segment of Peter Kuper's "Spy vs. Spy", this time taking place at the San Diego Comic-Con:

...this will probably be the closest we'll ever get to seeing Peter Kuper draw Batman, the Hulk, or Conan.

There's movie poster parodies, "Hancock Outtakes", a really clever mash-up called "Calvin and Jobs", featuring Bill Watterson's creation and the head of Apple, "A Field Guide to America's Most Incompetent Summer Camp Counselors", and then the one, the only Sergio Aragones taking a look at super-heroes:

Next is "Sucker City", a four-page parody of those junk mail ads you get that is so visually spot on that the first time through the magazine, I skipped over it because I thought it actually was an ad for Circuit City!

There's a collection of strips called "The Strip Club" (featuring "Fantabulaman" by Ted Rall), and then the issue ends, as all Mads must, with the Mad Fold-In:

...the joke is weak, but that's ok. Like with Peter Kuper, I enjoy the sight of seeing Superman, Batman, et al, drawn by Al Jaffee.

Mad is in pretty good hands, I have to say. Early teens looking for some edgy humor are well served by the old stand-by. I think W.M. Gaines would be pretty happy.

Mad #483 - EC / Simpsons Classics #14 - Bongo

I thought for today I'd do a double post round-up of two current comic magazines, Mad and Simspons Classics.

I've still not accepted Mad in color, but I guess that's just because I'm an old fuddy-duddy. The varying art styles seem to conflict more in color than they do in black and white, but I guess Mad has a tough enough time in the marketplace; being black and white is just a non-starter.

Included in this issue are "A Mad Look At Zombies" by Sergio Aragones, Spy vs Spy by Peter Kuper, "7 Periods Closer to Death" by Ted Rall, and of course the Mad Fold-In by Al Jaffee.

There's also a good portion of timely material, and it's actually not bad--there's "Idiotic Anti-Gun Control Arguments The NRA Hasn't Used--Yet" by Jacob Lambert and Kuper, "Amazing Facts About Jenna Bush's New Book"(#4--"The book, Ana's Story, A Journey of Hope, is widely expected to outsell Mary Cheney's memoir, A Father's Gentle Sneer"--actually made me laugh out loud), and best of all, a two-page feature called "Rejected Hillary Clinton Campaign Slogans" drawn by the great Paul Coker:
...the thing I liked about Mad's political stuff is that it's specific. Sure, they pick on both sides, which when a TV show does it normally means the same "Politicians are dishonest! Har! Har!" jokes applied to both sides.

The jokes aimed at Bush and Hillary in this issue are specific to them, which means the Mad writers are at least paying attention, which is more than I can say for a lot of news networks! Bravo, Usual Gang of Idiots!
_________________________________________________________
As I said before when I reviewed Simpsons Classics #13, I'm not that huge a fan of the Simpsons comics, even though I love the show(and pretty much everything Matt Groening has been involved with).

There's some missing ingredient to me that keeps me from laughing much, but I'm always willing to give them another shot, and I'm so delighted at Bongo's old-school aesthetic that the least I can do is shell out four bucks every three months to pick up the newest issue.

Stories in this issue include:
"Get Off The Bus!" by Rob Hammersley, Todd Greenwald, Phil Ortiz, and Tim Bavington--Sideshow Bob goes the Dennis Hopper route in a parody of Speed
the delightful one-page "The Unbearable Lightness of Barney"
the two-page "Diner Violations" starring Springfield's finest, Lou and Eddie
an ad for Krusty the Clown's Celebrity Psychic Hotline
"They Fixed Homer's Brain" by Doug Tuber, Tim Maile, Stephanie Gladden, Tim Harkins, and Bavington
and "Tales of the Briny Deep"(starring the Old Sea Captain) by Jamie Angell, Ortiz, and Bavington

...it's remarkable how similar in tone these comics are to the show; they work as perfectly companion pieces. For every lowbrow joker of Homer being hit by something, there's some esoteric or philosophical joke tossed in as well.

Mad Super Special #9 - EC

Another one of the superb Super Specials that Mad put together in the late seventies featuring complete, regular-sized reprints of the classic early, comic book Mad.

This special features a reprint of Mad #1, arguably one of the most influential and important comics ever printed. I can't imagine what a mental grenade this first issue must have been to kids buying it at the time, since they had no chance to prepare themselves for the material inside.

One of the things I never realized about these reprints was that they're not issue specific--Mad was moving various stories around in these reprints, so that the material reprinted here--Wally Wood's "Superduperman", John Severin's "Melvin of the Apes!", Will Elder's "Outer Sanctum!"--didn't actually appear in Mad #1. Weird.

Anyway, as if that wasn't enough, Mad gave you another eighty pages of classic material for your 60 cents(cheap!):
"Don Martin Tries 8 New Ways to Fly", "Mad's Chemical Banquet", "Legendary Medicine Cabinets", "When the 'No Opinion' People Become the Majority", Frank Jacobs' and Mort Drucker's spot-on parody called "Can A Lot"--completely done in song; Dave Berg's "The Lighter Side of American Tourists", and "The Mad Ice Hockey Primer", drawn by the legendary Jack Davis!

One of my favorite pieces is "If Comic Strips Covered the Burning Issues of the Day", featuring Superman dealing with air pollution, Dick Tracy engaging in police brutality(something Gould himself probably wanted to do), and Beetle Bailey's stance on Vietnam. A very silly piece, but undeniably funny:
...I dunno, that makes me laugh everytime I see it.

There's also Don Martin taking on duck hunters, "The Mad Poetry Round Robin" by Jacobs and George Woodbridge, "A Mad Peek Behind the Scenes at an Airport" by Larry Siegel and Jack Rickard, the uber-cynical "Christmas Is...", Spy Vs. Spy by Prohias, "Horrifying Cliches" drawn by Paul Coker(one of my favorites), "A Mad Look At Realistic Dolls", "The Lighter Side of the Generation Gap", "Don Martin in a Fancy Restaurant", "If Polls and Surveys Had Been Used Through History", "A Mad Look At Frustration", "The Odd Squad" by Dick De Bartolo and Drucker, plus more Spy Vs. Spy and Don Martin--*whew*!

Plus it all wraps up with another Mad Fold-In, and on the back cover with one more swipe at the Tobacco Industry, one of Mad's favorite targets.

If you're a Mad fan, you can't beat the value you get with these specials, even at the prices they command on ebay. You get a ton of great material by the all-stars of the Mad team, plus the classic comic book Mad! You'd be an idiot--and not the good, usual-gang-of kind--to pass 'em up.

Mad #100 - EC

For a blog about black and white comic magazines, I don't talk about Mad very much. Why is that? It certainly deserves the attention, being the preeminent source of humor for at least two generations, not to mention being the last surviving publication of the legendary EC Comics(even if its in name only at this point).

I think its because its hard to review humor--either you find something funny, or you don't. Writing sentences like "One of Al Jaffee's lesser Fold-Ins" just seems a bit silly to me.

But I do have this issue of Mad in my collection--the 100th anniversary issue, yet--so I'll do my best.

The opening feature is "Future Broadway Musicals", a very clever piece featuring literary classics set to song, like Moby Dick, Julius Caesar, A Tale of Two Cities, and Tarzan of the Apes. Very funny and incredibly inventive, with nice art by Jack Rickard.

There's also "The Wonderful World of Re-Packaging", featuring one of Mad's favorite targets. advertising. Spy vs. Spy checks in afterwards, and then is "The Nilson Family" by Stan Hart and the legendary, seemingly immortal Mort Drucker.

Paul Coker contributes the silly "Mad Beastlies", and Dave Berg shows us "The Lighter Side of Sleep." Sergio Aragones provdies approximately a million little drawings for "What Is A Blind Date?", and then is "Shirley Finster's New York", featuring some incredibly detailed artwork by George Woodbridge, making the piece look and feel like its setting. "Keep New York Clean! Dump YOur Litter in New Jersey."--heh.

There's a Mad Puzzle Page by Al Jaffee, "Mad's Modern Believe it or Nuts!", and "The Toy Manufactuer of the Year" by Stan Hart and Joe Orlando!

Spy Vs. Spy returns, and then the late, great Don Martin illustrates "The Swan Song of A Modern Hiawatha", another very clever melding of high culture and lowbrow humor.

"Hack, Hack, Sweet Has-Been"(ouch) is by Larry Siegel and Mort Drucker, rendering dead-on caricatures of Bette Davis and Olivia DeHavilland, and then we wrap up with one more Don Martin page and of course, a Mad Fold-In, an unusually sweet one("Happy Holidays") from the Usual Gang of Idiots.

Mad #478 - EC Comics

I was in the supermarket today and I stopped by the magazine section. And even though Mad isn't written for my age anymore(as it should be!), I was fairly impressed by the contents of the issue I had bought a few months ago, so I thought why not see if they've been keeping it up?

I'm not sure I'll ever get used to Mad being in color, and it's the color I think that helps give the magazine its MTV-ish all-over-the-place look, but its probably nothing your average eleven-year couldn't handle. There's a few pages of random gags, some about politics, Rosise O'Donnell, and Taco Bell.

Then there's the main feature, a parody called "Lewd & Disorder It's P.U."(ahh, Mad), drawn the legendary Mort Drucker. It's like no time has elapsed...this is exactly the same kind of piece that could've appeared in the magazine back when I was a kid! There's something reassuring about that.

There is a series of one-page fake ads promoting the Army, which are, to me, astonishing in their direct assault on them and how they're hijacking young men into laying their life on the line. Considering the climate we're in, where in some circles it's almost taboo to say anything negative about the armed forces, these ads are almost courageous. Hell, it's sharper satire than anything on the entire last season of Saturday Night Live.

There's a feature about the National Spelling Bee, which has obvious jokes but is drawn by Paul Coker so it's cool, some jibes at Spider-Man 3, a story called "Monroe and...Cruelty Free" drawn by Tom Fowler(who has a perfect Mad style), and a fun piece called "The Average 5th Grader Knows...", drawn by Peter Bagge, which if I was was a fifth grader I would read and think "It's like Mad knows my life!"

There's a section by Sergio Aragones(of course!) about the art world that's genuinely funny, a Spy vs. Spy section by Peter Kuper that's pretty violent(even by their standards!), another parody called "Dud the Lousy Hunter"(they don't care whose toes they step on!"), and, of course, we end with a Mad Fold-In, still drawn by Al Jaffee. I think when Jaffee dies and gos to heaven, he'll be in an art studio where he can just draw stuff and not have to worry about the left and right sides matching up to make a third image.

So I pretty much come to the same conclusion I did last time--Mad is pretty good. They've got a nice selection of old guard talent mixed with new and/or underground guys, and if I was a little kid I'd be eating it up. Still not sure about the color and the advertising, but I guess that can't be helped. A thousand humor magazines have come and gone, and yet Mad is still here.

Mad Super Special #28 - EC

Ok, let's give the marvel monsters a break for now, and let's get Mad!

This is another of those unbelievably-awesome, super-thick super specials that came with a full-color replica of an original Mad comic book; in this case its issue #7.

I think I got into this a little bit before, but it's hard to appreciate how revolutionary something was when, to you, its always been around. By the time I was a kid, Mad was an institution; something all kids read at one time or another.

But looking at these early issues, I get a better sense at just how much of a cultural grenade the original Mad was--it was so fast, so irrevrent, so chaotic that reading these early issues as they came out must have been something to behold. Reading a comic book that made fun of everything in 1950's America must have felt so...revolutionary.

In Mad #7, we have "Robinson Crusoe!" by Will Elder, "Prince Violent!" by Wally Wood, who manages to cram approximately sevety-five people in each panel; "Restaurant!" also by Elder; an insane adaptation of the poem "The Face Upon The Floor!" by H.Antoine D'Arcy drawn by Jack Davis; and one last Elder piece "Shermlock Shomes in The Hound of the Basketballs" which to me is more entertaining than any of the original Conan-Doyle stories.

In the Super Special itself, they start it off with about fifteen pages of new material by Mad staples like Sergio Aragones, Tom Rickard, and Bob Clarke. The movie parody is "The Towering Sterno" by Dick DeBartolo and (of course) the master Mort Drucker. After that is classic material by Dave Berg, Don Martin, Prohias' Spy vs. Spy, Arnie Kogen, George Woodbridge, Frank Jacobs, Al Jaffee, and Paul Coker, who draws a still timely piece called "Mad's CIA Agent of the Year".

And of course we get a Mad Fold-In, and a weirdly serious anti-drug poster on the back ("Who goes up...must come down!"). Kind of a discordant note after the seventy-plus pages of silliness that preceeded it, but hey, points for trying something different.

Thanks, usual gang of idiots!

Mad Super Special #24 - EC

What better magazine to talk about on April Fool's Day than Mad? And not just regular Mad, but the super-cool Super Specials that featured tons of material per issue, plus a full-color reprint of one of the original comic-book-size Mads! As the Usual Gang of Idiots say--$1.00--cheap!

This special reprints Mad #6 which features the classics "Flesh Garden" by Wally Wood, "Kane Keene, Private Eye" by Jack Davis, and "Mole!" by Will Elder. Everytime I reread one of these reprints, I'm reminded all over again just how good the original Mad was--a classic, through and through.

Much like the Warren reprints, Mad really had the ability to put together an amazing array of talent in these reprint collections--we've got two TV/movie parodies by Mort Drucker ("The Poopsidedown Adventure" and "Bawde"), plus material by Don Martin, Paul Coker, Sergio Aragones (of course!), Dave Berg, Al Jaffe, Prohias' Spy vs. Spy, and of course, a Mad Fold-In.

I think over the last few years people have gotten more interested in these specials and the fountain of material they contain, because I've seen the ebay prices for them go up considerably. They are an absolute delight; for just a few bucks you can get yourself a big heaping slab of classic Mad!

Mad #474 - EC

I thought I'd take a slight detour from profiling the classic b/w mags of the past and take a look at the lone survivor of the format's Golden Age: Mad magazine.

I was charmed to see Mad still on sale at my local 7-11, so I picked it up. I have to admit, I think I felt a twinge of shame as it sat there on the counter as the line behind built up. I'm sure the Usual Gang of Idiots would be proud of that.

Anyway, of course it's hard to review Mad, since I am far past the age group its intended for. But I will say, I was fairly impressed at the level of content they've got going now. Besides work from classic Mad creators Sergio Aragones, Mort Drucker, and Al Jaffe (still doing the fold-ins!), you've got Spy vs Spy by Peter Kuper, and some nice artwork by people unknown to me before now, like Jose Garibaldi, Tom Fowler, and Leonardo Ridriguez.

There are genuine political jokes, here, too, which is impressive when you think that Mad is aimed at young teens. If this inspires an instant skepticism towards the government, then Mad has done its job. There are also jabs at OJ, Bin Laden, and Rumsfeld--hardly risky subjects, but more timely and resonant than the average episode of Saturday Night Live.

And I will admit--one joke genuinely made me laugh. In a mock ad sequence called Foolastic Book Club (ah, Mad), they have a blurb for the real-life line of kids books called Animporphs. On top of a cover scan comes Mad's blurb: "Great for Burning!" That made me laugh.

The one thing I found I was unable to get past--the color. Mad in color just seems...wrong to me. But I guess an all-black-and-white mag just wouldn't fly nowadays, so I guess Mad Marches On (which had to have been the name of one of their paperbacks, surely). I find the color makes the over-stuffed layouts a bit hard to follow, but they're probably child's play to kids raised on Playstation.

So I have to say--if I was an 11-year-old kid who wasn't already in training to be a good little robot, who actually saw most things with an already-jaundiced eye--I would love Mad. Which means Mad is as good as it ever was.