From the July 31, 1977 New York Times: "THE 'MAD' GENERATION - After 25 years of perpetuating humor in the jugular vein, the magazine that wised up millions of kids is still a crazy hit" by Tony Hiss (son of Alger) and Jeff Lewis.Below is page one, which should blow up nice and big for easy reading of the ol' pixels.
Like millions of other boys, I grew up with MAD. In the early 1970s, I distinctly recall making the decision to subscribe (when I realized I could get the mag for less than the cover price of 40 cents if I could save up the dollars), and walking down the shag-carpeted hallway to good ol' Dad, sitting in his chair in the living room, to ask him to make out a check to the good folks at E.C. Publications.
Above: a special painting by Norman Mingo done especially for the Times, so says the article. Let me know if that's not true.
I was pleased to see credit given to Harvey Kurtzman, and there is a hat tip to the circumstances of his leaving the mag after its first 22 issues.I love the above photo, taken in 1963, of Bill Gaines, in what looks like full samba mode, and some of the MAD staff (from top to bottom in the doorway) Nick Meglin, John Putnam, Al Feldstein, Leonard Brenner, Nelson Tirado and Jerry De Fuccio.
The scan on this is not the greatest. The Times magazine, as of 31 years ago, was rather large and required multiple scans in my pokey scanner.By the way, last week, the Times cut the width of their paper by 1.5 inches. Shrinky, shrinky, shrinky! This makes the Times about the same width as the Wall Street Journal. And this is after raising its price from $1.00 to $1.25 per daily issue. My wallet is going shrinky too.
"Alfred E. Neuman was everything that parents prayed deep-down their kids wouldn't turn into -- and feared they would." Holy cow!
This article made me want to go and read a lot of old MADs.
UPDATE: Mark Evanier responds to this article here.
Funny, it makes me want to drink Gordon's gin.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the time and effort needed to post these.
Yeah, thanks!
ReplyDeleteIt's fun getting elaborate verbal descriptions of panels I haven't seen for years, but are etched in memory.
I'm in full Mambo mode, but I still look forward to digging into those scans!
ReplyDeleteThanks for posting this Mike, nice overview of Kurtzman and MAD.
ReplyDeleteI was amused by the errors in the last page. René Goscinny (creator of Asterix) is described as "René Gozzini", and the article mentions he "studied" and shared a studio with Kurtzman in the 1960's. They actually shared a studio (with Will Elder) in the early 1950's, before MAD came along. The article also vastly overstates Kurtzman's influence in European comics.
Thanks for posting this. I saw this drool worthy "collection of 53 years of Mad Magazine" DVD on amazon, which isn't the same as being able to flip through them, but man would it be great to just be able to access your favorite pages at the click of a button. Sometimes lightning only strikes once in mags like this.
ReplyDeleteThanks for posting this. I saw this drool worthy "collection of 53 years of Mad Magazine" DVD on amazon, which isn't the same as being able to flip through them, but man would it be great to just be able to access your favorite pages at the click of a button. Sometimes lightning only strikes once in mags like this.
ReplyDelete