Potrzebie

So it appears Mad magazine will soon end regular publication.  Sad news, indeed.  When I was a kid, nothing was funnier than Mad.  And there were millions of others like me, eagerly awaiting the latest issue.

Eventually I discovered the compilations from earlier years, which were even better.  Going back to the earliest days of the publication, there was nothing like it.  It was brilliant--satirical and bizarre.  It changed how you looked at the world.

Mad was started in 1952 by EC Comics publisher William Gaines, who wanted to create a humor comic--as opposed to his horror and sci-fi titles--that would give his best (but slowest) writer, Harvey Kurtzman, a new revenue stream.  It became a huge hit and, at Kurtzman's urging, was transformed into magazine format.  With comics threatened by censorship that allegedly protected kids, Mad ended up saving Gaines--the newly formed Comics Code Authority didn't have any power over magazines.

It was written entirely by Kurtzman who, perhaps sensing he was indispensable, demanded a controlling interest.  Gaines dispensed with him, and the magazine went on to only grow more popular. (Meanwhile, Kurtzman spent the rest of his career trying to recapture that popularity.)

For decades, every kid who was interested in comedy read Mad.  Numerous comedians, writer and artists have attested to its importance in their lives.  There were the parodies of popular culture that were the mainstay from the start.  There was the magazine's mascot, Alfred E. Neuman.  And there were recurring features that became favorites: Don Martin, Dave Berg's Lighter Side, Al Jaffee's Snappy Answers To Stupid Questions as well as his back page Fold-In, Sergio Aragones' marginal drawings, Spy Vs. Spy and so many more.

But, in the last few decades--the internet age--magazines have become harder to sustain.  I'm surprised to see Mad leaving us, but maybe we should be happy it lasted as long as it did. (It sure beat out National Lampoon.)