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Mad Magazine

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About This Episode

We’re flipping through the pages of Mad Magazine! This legendary satirical publication warped young minds, skewered sacred cows, and helped define American humor for generations. From Alfred E. Neuman’s toothy grin to the fearless parodies that ruffled feathers and cracked us up, we’re exploring how Mad became a cultural institution, and why its influence still matters today.

(May contain some explicit language.)

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Show Notes

TRANSCRIPT

SpeakerTranscript
JonWelcome back, Gen X Grown Up Podcast listeners to this, the backtrack edition of the Gen X Grown Up Podcast. I am John. Joining me as always, of course, is Mo. Hey, man.
Modo it. Hey, how’s it going?
JonWould not be a show without George. Hey, George.
GeorgeHey, how’s it going, guys?
JonIn this episode, we’re flipping through the pages of Mad Magazine. This legendary satirical publication warped young minds, skewered sacred cows, and helped define American humor for generations.
JonFrom Alfred E. Newman’s toothy grin to the fearless parodies that ruffled feathers and cracked us up, we’re exploring how mad became a cultural institution and why its influence still matters today.
JonIt’s interesting… This was a distillation of an episode we had planned. We’re going to talk about just publications we read as kids.
MoI know.
JonAnd we had a lot of them in mind and we’re like, oh, my God, so many of these could be their own episode. And we’re like, fine, let’s do mad. Let’s just start with the one that’s probably the most well known.
MoYeah. I can tell Mad could be two episodes if we really wanted it be.
Jonah
JonYeah, yeah, yeah. Mo did the bulk of the research for this one.
Georgeyeah
JonAnd there’s a lot to know. And we’re just going touch on as much as we can to help you remember.
MoMm-hmm.
JonBefore we get into that, though, it is time for some fourth listener email. Our fourth listener this time around is Schlumpy. You guys ought to remember Schlumpy. He’s written in before.
Moyeah
JonFunny name. ah He writes home about the home phone backtrack.
Moand Okay.
JonYeah. Sorry, I stalled myself. and trying to remember if that was YouTube or not. It was not. It was email.
JonYeah, it’s a home phone backtrack. And this is what Schlumpy has to say. Hello, guys. Love the show. Great start. Perfect start to an email.
MoGood start. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
JonWell done. I was just listening to your home phone backtrack, and I wanted to share a few of my memories. First off, I know you will say that we have an email from our fourth listener, but wouldn’t that be any of your family members? Just saying, I’m sure at least one of them is listening. All right, Schlumpy, let’s check.
JonSo start with George, family listening.
GeorgeI don’t listen.
JonOkay, so that’s minus one. All right, so that’s fine.
GeorgeIt
JonMo?
MoActually, ah my wife listens.
JonOkay, so that’s back to zero.
Georgedoesn’t count.
Jonit doesn’t count. It’s your wife.
MoHe said family.
Jondoesn’t count.
MoThat’s true.
Jonwere probably She’s probably forced to listen, so it’s because you’re she’s in your proximity. And I guess, yeah, periodically my daughter will listen if she’s driving somewhere. But again, close family, they’re bullied into listening.
JonThey almost have to.
MoYeah.
JonI can’t bully. George is unbulliable, or he would listen. But… No, I’m sorry. Schlumpy, you are the fourth listener. There’s no way around it. Just accept the moniker. He goes on to say, anyway, the show brought back some memories regarding a funny Geico commercial where they called to collect and said, we had a baby eats a boy on YouTube.
JonI remembered that one.
Georgeyeah
JonHad to go look it up. so To refresh your memory, fourth listener, if you don’t remember, ah its somebody’s calling remote and they don’t want to they want to pay for it. So they go collect call from, we had a baby eats a boy.
JonAnd
GeorgeWait, did you just say calling remote? How would they call local?
Jonah Well, then it wouldn’t be.
GeorgeLike, if they were in the same house, would they call each other on a phone that would cause them to be charged?
JonWhat? No, I meant that. OK, right.
MoWe long distance. From
JonThat’s what I meant. Long distance. I forgot what long. I forget the term for long distance because I don’t use that term anymore.
Moafar.
GeorgeHa ha
JonYeah. What did you call remote back in the day from far away? So it was long distance. Yes, I did say that.
Georgeha ha
JonBut yes.
Mobut afar
JonWe had a baby eat some boy. He says the other memory is that in regards to the black box device, I remember that Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs used one to call the Pope and actually got connected.
JonI didn’t know that, but that doesn’t surprise me either, so. He wraps it up by saying, I love old tech and phones and still have a rotary pay phone, which still works with the help of a Bluetooth gadget you can buy from Amazon.
JonKeep up the good work, Schlumpy. Cool.
MoVery cool.
JonThank you, Schlumpy. ah You call us remote anytime you like. It’s okay with me. We appreciate that you listened and that you took the time to write in. Fourth listener, if you would like your email featured here on the show, you know it is drop dead easy. Just hit us up at podcast at genxgrownup.com. We read every single email that hits our inbox.
JonWe read every single email that hits our inbox. And most of them, like schluppies, will eventually make the show. All right. It’s time to open up the page of Mad Magazine right after this quick break.
JonIt’s time to turn the page into Mad Magazine after this break.
JonWe’re talking in this episode all about Mad Magazine, a periodical that I think every kid it was band-aided. You had to have at least one or two of them in your toy box or in your room to play with.
JonAnd it it’s it was pure, unadulterated crime. craziness, lunacy from some some really brilliant minds. And we want to talk about all of the articles and the segments and stuff like that.
MoOh, yeah.
JonBut Mo, you did the bulk of the research leading into this episode. So we thought maybe we would ask you to walk us through kind of the origin of the magazine and how it got to where it was, where it legendary status.
MoOh, absolutely. So it starts long time ago. ah So just after World War Two, actually, there was a comic book company called EC Comics, which stood for educational comics back then, actually.
Moah the The founder died. His son took over in 1947 and he decided to he’s going to be he’s going to change it to entertaining comics.
JonOh, broaden the, yeah.
MoWhereas before they used to do things like, you know, they used to educational, science, biblical stories. He’s like, nope, now we’re doing horror, sci-fi, war and crime. um Matter of fact, one of the titles they came up with was Tales from the Crypt.
MoSo that was one of the original titles they came up with.
Georgeyep
JonOh, that was an EC. Okay.
MoYep. So then enter somebody named Harvey Kurtzman. ah He was a military vet from the Korean War. I’m i’m sorry, from World War II. And he wanted to be an illustrator. ah He did some odd jobs. He finally got a job as EC and eventually became an editor.
JonOK.
MoSo they’re not sure, and this is some debate. i actually looked, and there is a huge debate on this, who actually came up the concept for Mad Magazine. They’re not really sure because both um both Kurtzman and Gaines both claim it was their idea.
JonOK.
JonOK. Yeah.
MoBut they do agree that basically they said that um back in the day in 1952, there were like something like 3,200 comics were published every week with 60 different titles.
MoSo there was a lot of competition and they were all going for that same demographic, which was young male, you know, boys, the young males at that time.
Jonyeah
JonDelinquents. Yes, that’s what we were
MoYeah, exactly.
GeorgeBye.
MoSo they wanted to stand out because they weren’t any really um humor magazines out there at all. No humor comic books. So they decided that they were going to come up with one.
Jonwere.
MoAnd so they came up with the first issue in October, 1952, and it was actually titled Tales Calculated to Drive You Mad.
JonOkay.
MoThat was actually the original title.
JonOh. I feel like I’ve seen that on later issues of the magazine. Like maybe it’s just a callback because they’ve used that like maybe sometimes like in the letters column or something.
Moyeah it was probably just a callback.
JonI’d heard that before. I didn’t know that was the initial like name of it though.
MoAnd back then, it was a comic book that was basically an entire comic book that was a parody of another comic book, is what they did.
JonHmm.
MoSo it wasn’t like the magazine format that we know today.
JonOkay.
Moah They printed 400,000 copies, sold it for 10 cents a piece, and it did not do well at all.
Jonah okay
MoThat issue and the next two issues all sold extremely poorly. So Kurtzman decided, know, what the hell? They said if they’re going fun of a comic book, they were going to make fun of the best comic book at the time. So they created a comic book called Super Duper Man.
MoGuess who they’re making fun of?
JonOh.
GeorgeYep.
JonSpider-Man.
MoYeah, Spider-Man. Exactly. oh And DC, who was known as Natural Comics back then, sent a strongly worded letter telling them that you know they should not be mocking their biggest hero.
JonOh, come on. Grow a thicker skin.
GeorgeWell, it’s very interesting because they, you know, EC ends up getting absorbed into that national comic company, which becomes DC later on.
MoYeah.
GeorgeSo yeah, they, rather than, you know, be worried about them, they just bought them.
MoIt’s kind of funny.
MoYeah, there you go.
JonNow we control you.
MoYep. and But of course, EC, you know, didn’t listen. ah They said there were a lot of legal letters that were sent back and forth, but they just basically ignored.
JonGood for them.
JonWell, but parody, right?
MoYes, exactly.
JonI mean, i don’t know. what the Was it the 50s, I guess you said? So was parody law, were the was it different?
MoYep.
JonI don’t know, but I mean.
MoWell, I think it helps establish some of that.
Georgeyeah yeah we’re gonna get into that later yeah
JonOkay. All right.
MoOkay, yeah, George will get into that.
JonAll right. So it wasn’t so clear cut. All right.
MoBut the news is, is that that one comic book sold 750,000 copies.
JonOh, nice.
MoAnd ever since then, it became a top hit it top seller. but They had issues like Starchy, which made fun of the Archie comic books.
JonOh, that was the model. So the the whole magazine would parody one thing rather than.
Moyou know Yep, the whole thing. It was just a comic book, essentially, that was a parody of another comic book.
GeorgeRight.
Jonso what we’re what we’re used to with Mad now where it’s like lots of little parodies.
MoExactly.
JonThey just the whole magazine with a whole parody.
Mowas just one parody.
JonHuh. OK.
MoSo, so after a while back in 1955, they decided they’re going to retool the whole magazine. And so they came up with basically the magazine format that we now know, which was multiple parodies, multiple small segments inside of a magazine rather than inside of a comic book.
JonOK. Mm
Jonhmm.
MoUm,
MoIt was, a you know, ah back then, the Mad Magazine was still a huge seller. Kirstman decided that since it was such a huge seller and he was so key that they can’t do without him, he said he wanted majority ownership of EC.
JonOkay.
MoThey said no.
JonFair. No.
MoHe went off, tried to start off his own spinoff competitor. That failed. Oh, well. um But enter a new person, Al Feldstein, as a new editor, and he was the editor for Mad Magazine for next 29 years.
JonOh, that’s, that’s the, that’s the prime time that we would have been reading it right in there.
Moand base
MoExactly.
JonYeah.
MoAnd he said that basically they created this atmosphere that hands off, let the artist do whatever.
JonYeah.
MoPublish it.
GeorgeSo the opposite of the Marvel method, apparently.
Mogiven them Yes.
GeorgeYeah.
Jonah Right.
Moyeah Very much so.
JonYeah. Right. And they had oddball artists who they let do oddball things and their creativity just flowed.
Moyes
JonAnd I think that’s why it resonated with us so much because it felt off the rails.
MoOh, yeah. And i’ll tell you that you know, and we’ll get to this a little bit later, but they also just hired some just the most creative and talented people that you could possibly imagine because that was the kind of atmosphere they wanted to work in.
JonHmm.
JonSure.
Mowanted something where they were just given freedom and make fun of this.
JonIsn’t that nice?
MoGreat. I have this idea.
JonHow cool.
MoFantastic. And it just it did nothing but serve the magazine going forward. And again, the magazine kept going up until almost the late 90s, but we’ll go into the downfall a little bit later.
JonYeah.
MoBut as an upside, though, again, it was doing extremely well. Matter fact, in… I think it was 1972 or 74 is their heyday when they were selling over 2 million copies of each episode of each issue back in the day.
JonOh, good for them. Wow.
MoSo again, great, great stuff.
JonYeah. yeah And, you know, in the next segment, i know we’re going to start talking about individual parts of the of the magazine. I guess it wasn’t a comic. It was a magazine. In fact, I read they got away.
MoIt was a magazine. It was a magazine.
JonThey got out of the comics code rules by calling themselves a magazine, which is a great twist on the rules, which I really enjoyed.
MoYeah. Yeah.
Jonah But I thought we’d quickly do, you know, a roundtable, as we often do. What is your relationship to Mad Magazine? How often did you read it?
MoMm-hmm.
JonWho who bought it for you? was it Were you allowed to read it or did you ever get in trouble for it? i mean, I can start… Often I would go with my dad and if he was you know going to do some work or he was going to meet some people or whatever, or going fishing or whatever he was doing, I was tagging along.
JonAnd the number one thing he would do to keep me occupied so I wouldn’t pester him was we’d stop by the convenience store and I could pick up something. Maybe it was Archie or Richie Rich or some comics or whatever.
JonBut very often it was a ah cracked or a mad or something like that because there was so much in it.
MoYeah.
JonAnd it was this ugly black and white newsprint. It wasn’t vibrant color or anything, but it felt underground. Even selling 2 million issues, it felt underground. And I felt like I wasn’t supposed to read it, but it was clearly for kids.
JonAnd I didn’t get everything, but I certainly and enjoyed it. Usually my dad bought it for me. What about you, George?
Mocool.
JonHow often did you read?
GeorgeI probably every time we went to Publix was when I would get a Mad Magazine.
MoOkay.
JonHead to the groceries.
GeorgeMom would let me get one of those. Same thing with like a comic book a Hot Wheels car. It was one of those kinds of like prize generating things for me.
JonMm-hmm.
GeorgeI really enjoyed um the spy versus spy stuff. We’re going to talk a little bit later about that.
MoMm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
JonMm-hmm. Yep.
GeorgeAnd um the the irreverence that was in the magazine, although being a couple of years younger than you, i don’t think I necessarily really got all of the in-jokes and the innuendo that was in a lot of the things, especially some of the stuff that was in the little side panels and margins and whatnot. Some of it was above my head, but…
GeorgeIt all made me laugh. It all made me feel like i was reading something that was made for people older than me, but still was easy enough for me to understand.
MoYes, very much so.
GeorgeSo I kind of felt like I was a kid getting to play adult, I guess, when I would read the magazine.
JonSure.
MoMm-hmm. Yeah.
JonYeah.
MoYeah.
GeorgeThat’s kind of how it made me feel.
JonYeah. Yeah. is ah Smart parody and juvenile humor interweaved. So you kind of got both of those things.
GeorgeYeah.
JonHow about you, Mo?
Mothis was definitely a staple on the long car trips for sure.
JonMm-hmm.
MoIt was like, cause it was one that it, it would keep you busy for a while.
JonRight.
MoLike a comic book, you blow through a comic book in 15 minutes, right? you know, that’s if you’re taking your time. um But this magazine took a while cause you had to read, it was, there were like full stories, like the movie parodies. It was, were long and I thought they were really funny.
JonYeah. And it was dense, too. Lots of words.
MoYeah.
JonLots to read.
MoLots, lots of stuff.
JonYeah. Yeah.
MoAnd it was just, I just loved them because the, you know, it’d be movie parodies for movies. I wasn’t even allowed to see yet. You know, you know.
Jonthat’s a good point. So you almost knew what this, you got to learn the story a little bit, even though you weren’t allowed.
MoYeah, like I learned the story of the Godfather from reading the parody in that magazine, you know, and you get the gist of it.
Jonhu
Georgeyou
MoWhen I finally saw the movie, it was ah it was actually kind of hilarious because I was like, wow, they really nailed this thing. But, you know, it was pretty much a staple. And it was one of those few things that me and my brothers could all agree on as well.
Jonyep. Yep.
MoLike it was it was an easy thing. oh new mad magazine. Sure. Let’s grab that. You know, we didn’t have to fight over who’s getting wet, whatever.
JonYep.
MoSo it was definitely a staple.
Jonyeah Yeah. Okay. So we all have a good familiarity. ah Fourth listeners, stick around. We’ll get back from this quick break and we’re gonna start talking about the different segments of the, of the mad magazine that we all enjoyed. Stick around.
MoSo now we’re going to get into the meat and potatoes of the magazine, and we can’t start any better than the most iconic identifiable character in Mad.
JonYum.
MoWhat is that, John?
Jonthe
MoMm
JonThe mascot, the gap-toothed little nerd who started as, his name is now Alfred E.
Mohmm.
JonNewman, we all know that, but he started as like a decoration in the magazine. It was almost like an in-joke that he was, like he had to look for him.
MoYeah.
JonHe was like, oh ah ah where’s Waldo? right He was on every magazine or in it or in the cover, but eventually he became so recognizable and associated with it that he just became the face of the magazine.
Jonah Kurtzman ah recalls an illustration of a grinning boy in a postcard with a caption, What Me Worry? You’re called? Oh yeah, just say it again. In fact, Kurtzman said he recalled the illustration of a grinning boy in a postcard with a caption, What Me Worry, and adopted it as that mascot for Matt.
JonI guess he first appeared on the cover in December of 56, all the way back. ah He was a write-in candidate for president. So it was just, he they used him in lots of different places. ah He’s now appeared on just about every cover once he was made official.
Jonah Feldstein decided to make him the official symbol for the magazine, and Norman Mingo was commissioned to do the first cover. Though he was near retirement at the time, he went on to create most of those covers that we know so well with Alfred E. Newman as the face of everybody on the planet.
JonFor the next 20 years, he was on there until it stopped being published.
Moyeah
MoI still remember the ah the Star Wars they made fun of Star Wars and they had him like a Jedi Alfred E.
JonYeah.
MoNewman Jedi
Georgeah right
Jononce Once he was in the Darth Vader mask with the eyes cut out so he could see his grin in the mouth. Yeah.
GeorgeSo should I just pick up or are we pitching to each other?
JonSorry. Yeah. want me throw to you?
GeorgeI didn’t know how we’re doing.
JonYeah, I can. I wasn’t sure how to throw. I can.
Moyeah yeah I agree yeah I wasn’t sure either
GeorgeIt doesn’t matter to me. I just didn’t know which one we were trying to do.
Jonah ah Yeah, and just just grab it. i didn’t know I didn’t have a clean way over to you.
GeorgeAll right.
JonOkay, thanks.
GeorgeI think for me, the ah the largest or the most famous of the reoccurring features has got to be Spy vs.
MoOh, yeah.
GeorgeSpy. Other than the magazine itself getting its own TV show later on, which we’ll talk about further in the ah podcast,
MoLoved him.
JonMm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
GeorgeI think this is the one thing that got outside of the magazine more than anything else. So I have, and still have it on one of my bookshelves, a spy versus spy collection of comics.
MoYeah.
MoYeah, I remember those.
JonMm-hmm. Yeah.
GeorgeThis was a wordless comic. So there were no words in any of the strips and generally it was white spy versus black spy.
Mohmm.
JonYeah.
GeorgeIt started in 1961, I guess. I think it was ah issue number 60 Antonio pro pro pro eyes, whatever.
JonWow.
GeorgeI I’m never pronouncing names correctly.
MoFor highest.
GeorgeUm, he, he created this thing. It’s brilliant. No matter which spy you’re rooting for, it’s whichever spy concocts.
GeorgeThe thing that’s going to happen is usually the one that loses.
Joncleverest thing
MoNot always, though.
GeorgeSo if black spy,
MoNot always. Every now and then.
GeorgeNot, oh, I said usually.
Mothey they you know I’m just saying, you know not always.
Jonyeah what do you mean remote versus long distance hmm
Georgequit qui being in the um-actually guy, because that’s not what I said.
Georgeokay well, first of all, that was an obvious error.
Jonah
GeorgeI said mostly or usually.
MoThat’s true. He did. He qualified it.
GeorgeSo anyway, i I really enjoyed it. There was a video game. We could talk a little bit about that later as well that I really enjoyed ah playing on either the Commodore 64 or the Amiga 500.
GeorgeI forget which, but it was just brilliant.
Jonyep
GeorgeThey even had a couple of characters that I don’t remember because they stopped in the early 60s and didn’t pick up again until the 2000s. Did you guys know there was a gray female spy?
MoI did not.
JonI don’t remember that ever. No.
GeorgeNo, because she didn’t appear until like 2005 after they stopped using her in the early 60s.
JonAnd we weren’t reading.
GeorgeSo it wasn’t during the time frame that we would have read.
JonUh,
Georgeum i guess the main guy, he originally created 241 of those cartoons.
JonThere you go. There’s your compilation book, right?
MoThat’s crazy.
GeorgeYeah, just crazy.
JonYeah.
MoNo.
GeorgeI love Spry vs. Spry. It’s a great feature.
JonMm-hmm.
MoI remember seeing some quote about that where the guy who created it was laughing because he says, like, you know, Castro accused him of being a spy and now he made all his money writing about, you know drawing spies.
JonYep.
JonThere you go. Mm-hmm.
MoSo that, I mean, one of my favorite parts in magazine was the the back cover fold-ins.
Joneven
Moyou
Georgeo
Moum Al Jaffe, just almost all the art for those. And he apparently he was making fun of like the Playboy centerfold kind of thing where you know it was something that you could fold in the back.
JonBecause it folds in, yeah. Yeah.
MoBut it was just great because it was almost like it was like a a bad pun or riddle that you read the whole thing and then to get the answer, you had to fold A to B.
JonMm-hmm.
Moyou know
JonRight.
Moum And so it was like his gains, the editor the guy who owned EC Comics, he thought this was the most brilliant idea ever because he says people will buy two copies now.
JonMm-hmm.
MoHe’s like one to fold and one to keep perfect.
Moand so And actually they went color in 1968. But again, Jaffe, he did every single one um until I think 2020 or he was until he retired. and He was like 99.
JonYeah, i every Mad Magazine I had, the back cover was mangled.
MoYes.
Jonlike it just I was not the guy who could buy one to keep and one to fold out, and I’m going to fold it, but I was, no surprise, I suppose, I was very meticulous. I’d use a ruler to make sure I folded it perfectly,
MoI’m not surprised at all.
Jonbecause I wanted to line up just right. And the picture lines up, but the words below the picture would also, the beginnings and ends of certain words would give the answer to whatever riddle thing they were doing.
MoYeah.
JonAnd, ah you know, we’ll talk about this a little bit later, Mo. You may not know, There’s an animated version of Mad that came along not too long ago. And the opening so cinematic of the show is a moving fold in.
JonAll these things happen.
MoOh.
JonThen the screen folds in on itself for the title. You got to see it. I know you’re a big fan of the fold in.
MoOh, have to look for that. Yeah.
JonSo you’ll have to check that out.
GeorgeMm-hmm.
JonBut yeah, yeah.
MoOh, fantastic.
JonThe folds in. Fold ins were ah great part that it was like the first thing I did because it was on the back cover, maybe before I left the store, right?
MoYeah.
JonIt was folded in.
MoYou fold the one in the store to take another one home.
JonWhat’s it look like? Yeah, but I would just do that softly. I wouldn’t do a hard crease because I want to get an estimate. Perfect at home. Yeah, probably the thing the thing that Mad was probably most known for.
Jonmean, all these things are accoutrement around that, but it was all the parodies. It was all the you know film and television shows and.
MoNo.
JonIt was, as you said, the godfather. You’d learn about this show. And whether you knew the movie or you didn’t or TV show or whatever they were parodying, the way they made fun of it was so juvenile as to love it. Like, for example, they started the first one ever was called Ping Pong.
JonAnd it was a parody of King Kong in 1953, right? that that doesn’t take a lot of creativity. You know, you could try to think deeper about, no, they just did the most obvious and silly thing that they could think of.
Mono
JonAnd if you knew the film or television show or whatever, you could, you could read it and go, Oh, that’s a reference to that. Or that’s smart. Kind of a deep cut. I remembering I would read the, the star Trek parodies they would do of every movie that came out or every series or whatever they would do.
MoMm-hmm.
JonAnd I’d be like, Oh, they actually know about that character because what they’re making fun of isn’t so obvious Or the flip side is you might not know the movie or TV show, and you could kind of learn what the show was about or what the movie was about through it while just making fun it. It was more of just ah a pure ha-ha, not so much parody, because you didn’t know the part they were making fun of. ah The first TV spoof they did was The Lone Stranger. i’m not even going tell you what that was about, because you could figure that out.
JonMort Drucker, one of the legendary mad artists, he did most of them. He started in 56. He was there working for 55 years. And the reason he did this one is he was known for great caricature.
JonAnd of course, in a parody, you want the the characters in the the parody to look like the actors who portray them on screen to to add the extra punch to the making fun of.
MoYeah.
JonAnd he would, you know, sit it’s like caricature. They’d accentuate parts of his face or whatever. that stood out and make it even funnier visually on top of the writing.
MoI mentioned before the Godfather one, and I don’t why for some reason that sticks out in my head, but I remember the ending of that whole parody is, you know, Al Pacino’s character. They’re like, wow. They’re like, he’s acting like the Godfather. And then he slowly turns into Marlon Brando at the end.
MoAnd I remember reading I was like, wow, I thought, i just thought it was funny. Then I saw the movie. I’m like, oh
JonRight. It’s insightful, right?
Moit’s exactly what it was.
JonLike you’re actually, you know more about the film.
MoHe turns into the guy.
JonIt’s not just surface level.
MoYeah.
JonIt’s actually more in depth than you thought. That’s what I always appreciated.
JonAll right. well We get back. We have much more of this magazine to dig through. We’re going to go through some more of our favorite recurring columns after this quick break.
GeorgeAll right, so we talked about a group of features in the last segment, but this is Mad Magazine.
JonMm-hmm.
GeorgeWe’ve got to have another segment to talk more about the features of this magazine because they did so much with this book over, guess it’s been 60 years or so, more.
JonSo much.
MoYeah.
JonYeah.
JonMm-hmm.
GeorgeI don’t know. how Math is hard.
JonYeah.
Georgebut
Mo<unk>cc
GeorgeOne of the ones just that we wanted to talk about or I wanted to talk about is a mad look at. And so these would be things like a mad look at movies or a mad look at schools or a mad look.
JonMm-hmm.
GeorgeAnd it was a cartoon panel, but it was done by Sergio Aragonese. Now, I know this guy not necessarily from Mad Magazine. I didn’t associate him with that, but I know him because he was the creator and ah artist of one of my favorite comic books called Gru.
Moyeah
GeorgeSo this guy has been around for a long time.
MoI remember that.
JonOh, yeah.
MoMm-hmm.
GeorgeHe’s still doing stuff today. um He started this one in January of 1963.
GeorgeSo it’s it’s been around for a long time. He, just like with Gru, he almost never uses word balloons in any of his stuff. Like maybe as like ah somebody saying like Gesundheit or something along those lines, he’ll do that.
GeorgeBut yeah, he, these mad looks, they’re just brilliant. He’s still done some in recent memories. So a few years ago, like 2017 or so, do you guys know what the mad look at was in issue number 545?
MoNo.
JonLet me think.
GeorgeOf course you don’t.
JonNo, I don’t.
GeorgeYeah. A mad look at YouTube.
MoWow.
JonReally?
GeorgeYeah, you can search for it on Google.
MoWow.
GeorgeYou can look at the image. It’s funny as hell. It’s just like you would imagine what Mad Magazine and this guy would do with a YouTube parody. It’s brilliant.
JonHmm. I want to go see it. that’s
MoYeah.
JonWell, then that’s that they continued to stay relevant. That was the thing. that They let those artists do their regular columns, but it’s whatever they were interested in at the time. and As the times changed, of course, current movies and TV shows, but also they would, whatever but pop culture was happening, they would just keep it current.
JonAnd that’s why it, I think, why it lived so long. before I jump into this, Marcus just messaged me to say that, George, you’re in the live chat on the GXG server and he can vaguely hear your voice in the background.
JonProbably an errant click.
Georgeah probably where I was trying to let me see on the discord chat.
JonYeah, and in in regular GXG.
GeorgeYep.
JonThat’s why he even knew.
GeorgeYeah. I kept hearing something click in and out. I had killed the whole thing. So I don’t know.
Jonum
GeorgeDiscord wasn’t even loaded on my screen, but yeah, it’s done now.
JonOkay, good. just want to let you know, won’t you?
GeorgeYep.
Jonso a Privacy issue.
MoOh, Marcus got a preview, huh?
JonYeah.
GeorgeYeah.
JonNobody else was in there, but Marcus pinged me. Okay. thera ah You finished talking about that. All right.
JonJust do a quick read.
JonOh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay.
JonThere’s another category of these recurring, I guess you’ll say art style. This wasn’t necessarily a specific a column, but artist Don Martin. And I’ll try to describe his art style, but it if you saw it, you’d go, bing, mad right away.
MoMm-hmm.
JonBut he was very, very specific about the way he drew, like, very tall, lanky guys with tall, narrow heads and very angular, like, elbows and hands and feet that would bend at really severe angles.
JonAnd it was just, everything was hyper-exaggerated. And you could tell if he did one of those one of those columns, whatever he was doing, you immediately knew that it was Don Martin. Now, he had been established ah ahead of joining Matt in 56.
JonAnd that style just… this the weird postures and everything. It just, was just something that he came up with. It was like, this is something nobody else is doing.
MoMm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Jonah Ultimately he had his own section of the magazine called the Don Martin department where he would do whatever he felt like. So he wasn’t locked into, I’m going to do the lighter side over the mad look at or fold in just whatever was on his mind.
JonHe just had free reign. And that, that, I think that plays right into what we talked about, how, Gaines and the other managers just let these artists do what they wanted to the point of just giving them a showcase and saying, this is your thing.
JonThis is the thing that and do whatever you want to do.
Moe
JonAnd he was established and clever enough that whatever he did, especially with that just weird, just uncomfortable looking art style. It just always made me chuckle.
MoOh, you’re done? Okay, sorry.
JonYeah, that’s okay. need me to test toss to air you’re good?
MoNo, no, i get it.
JonOkay. Sorry. You were just waiting on me.
Moright. And the other section I really enjoyed was the lighter side of I don’t know if you remember, those began in October of 1961.
JonRight. Mm-hmm.
MoAnd that was Dave Berg. And it was, his first comic was the lighter side of the television set. ah You know, these things always made fun of something that was current, like some lifestyle thing, like office, like parties, little league games, whatever, you know, I mean, he did them for 46 years.
JonOh.
JonMm-hmm.
JonYeah.
MoThis is again, just amazing. Just thinking the tenure on these things um created like 365 individual comics
JonYeah.
MoBut I remember seeing like the very first one, lighter side of television was things like, you you see a guy late for work and his wife’s yelling at him. He’s getting his briefcase on. He’s running past his kids or watching TV. Wife comes out and the dad’s like in between the kids watching TV.
JonYeah.
MoYeah, like not forgetting all about work and everything else.
JonYeah. yeah
MoHe said it was just very, very tongue in cheek, but very just pertinent to what was going on.
Jonit was It was another facet of the things they were poking fun at. So they but made fun of pop culture. They made fun of entertainment and media. And they just made fun of average home life.
JonAnd that the lighter side of was largely just regular people living their lives, the lighter side of work or the lighter side of riding in an elevator or whatever.
MoYeah.
JonAnd they just put it together these little skits. And it was just another thing, another avenue of things that they could poke fun at.
JonOkay. And I can just transition that into mine if you guys are good. You’re funny. the and This is far from the last of the many different kinds of things that you would see in Mad Magazine, but it’s the last one we want to point out here specifically that we remembered. And it’s probably one of my favorites. And the thing about it is I didn’t discover this was a thing until years into me reading Mad Magazine.
JonAnd that’s the little cartoons in the margins and between panels on multiple ah pages of the magazine. You guys remember these little tiny things?
MoMm hmm.
GeorgeOh, yeah.
MoOh, yeah.
JonAnd they were just like little sight gags. They were usually like maybe somebody was falling off of the panel or they were climbing up the side of it or something. And those were Sergio Argones again. And they had a name. i didn’t know they had a name.
JonMad Marginals. I love that name. Or Drawn Out Dramas. ah Which I like Mad Marginals myself.
MoYeah, Mad Marshall’s good.
JonYeah. But they were just little gag images and they would be wherever they they would, inside of someone else’s. It was in the lighter side or a movie parody.
GeorgeWell, and sometimes they would be related to each other throughout the magazine, I remember that, and sometimes they were related to the thing that they were attached to physically.
JonA running theme. Yeah.
GeorgeLike, if there was a panel about Star Wars parody, the little marginal might be like somebody kicking an Ewok off the side of the cube or something along those lines.
MoYeah.
JonYep.
JonYeah.
MoRight.
JonRight.
MoAnd we every now and then they do some of their actually little like flip movie things too, that you actually flip them and they would do some sort of action ah across the margin.
JonYeah.
GeorgeSure.
JonOh, really?
MoOh yeah, there were a few that often, but they did do them every now and then which were always fun.
JonOh.
GeorgeYeah.
JonOh.
Jonand And I mentioned I didn’t know it existed until some time later. I guess they just looked past them. I wasn’t aware of them. And when I noticed they existed, I’m like, oh. And so i’m digging through my closet looking for old mad magazines to dig through it and find these little, they were like Easter eggs that were hidden that I forgot or didn’t notice or missed.
JonAnd so I got to enjoy old magazines again. by going back and and discovering them. I guess the feature premiered in Mad… night They say the feature premiered in Mad Episode… Episode.
JonFuck, one more time. They say this little feature premiered in Episode… God damn it! What’s it called? Issue!
MoWe have our gag words in.
JonIssue! I can’t… There’s a blooper, finally. Okay.
JonI guess the feature premiered in issue number 76 of Mad, and since then it’s appeared in every issue of the magazine, except except for number 111. According to the artist, his work for that issue got lost in the mail, and so it just didn’t get included.
JonSo… Go figure. ah But yeah it was a value add. It was more of that the reason that even when I had my own allowance, it would buy mad. It was another thing that made me feel like I’m really going to get my money’s worth because I have the magazine, the front cover, the back cover. That’s funny.
JonAnd then you have the real articles. And then you can go through it again, looking for the little extra bonus things that it just was so rich.
Mothat’s
JonAnd that’s why it kept us so busy. That’s why my dad would buy it for me to keep me busy because he knew I could continue to go back for it time and time again.
JonFor a magazine that has been around for decades and decades, 50, 60, 70, whatever it is. i mean, as you mentioned, not so much in print anymore, but up until pretty recently. But it has had a huge impact on on everything in its arena, on parody and what the laws are and stuff like that. And i know, George, you kind of that’s your area that you’re most interested in. You want share with us a little bit about what you know there?
GeorgeYeah, so back in 1961, the very first lawsuit that really involved this magazine was all about parody, as you might imagine. And it was them being sued by a group of, I guess…
Georgeproducers or legal representation for some ah recording artists at the time like Irving Berlin and even Cole Porter uh these are low old artists from the 60s and it’s because Mad Magazine was producing a thing in their magazine called Sing Along with Mad where they were parodying 25 songs so they would give you something like um
MoYeah, yeah, yeah.
JonYeah.
MoMm-hmm.
JonI remember.
GeorgeThere’s no business like no business sung to the tune of there’s no business like show business.
MoIt was like showbiz. That’s right.
Jonyeah. Yeah.
GeorgeThat kind of thing, right?
Moi remember those.
GeorgeWell, so they went to court over this thing, and very quickly, the presiding judge ruled in favor of Mad Magazine on 23 of the 25 songs.
MoOh, only 23. Whoa,
GeorgeOkay. Only 23 out of the 25. Now this kind these group of artists and their representation, they were suing Mad Magazine in 1961 for $25 million dollars in 61.
Moah
Jonridiculous
Mowhoa holy crap.
GeorgeSo i I did not do the math because my brain doesn’t go that high, but I’m sure that’s a large number today.
MoOh, that’s just it’s a big number.
JonYeah, it’s it’s it’s like roughly triple probably. It’s probably 75, 80 mil.
MoOh, it’s probably more than I think.
JonYeah. Jeez. yeah oh
Moit’ It’s a big number.
Georgeah Yeah.
Jongez
GeorgeFrom 61, it’s, yeah, it’s crazy. Anyway, ah so they, of course, because the judge ruled against them, and he said on the other two songs, like, I’m not really sure, they appealed.
GeorgeWell, the appeals court said, oh, well, not only is that judge right, but he should have included the other two songs, so you get nothing on anything.
JonOh.
GeorgeSo…
Monice
GeorgeNow, why is this important? Well, this in 1964. John, you and i especially get benefits from this because this is the type of ruling that allowed artists like Weird Al Yankovic to flourish today because without magazine Mad Magazine doing these parodies that then got upheld and became part of like things like free use that we use on YouTube all the time or fair use, whatever it’s called free use for me because I’m going to free use everything I don’t give a shit but what are they going to take from me?
MoMm-hmm.
JonThere you go.
JonMm-hmm. Yeah. Right, right. Yeah.
Mowho
Jonit’s Yeah.
GeorgeI don’t have 25 million in 1961 they ain’t going to get nothing but without these kinds of rulings, without Mad Magazine, I don’t think we would have parody in the form that we have now.
GeorgePolitical parody, right?
MoOh, yeah.
JonMm-hmm.
GeorgeSatire.
JonSocial.
GeorgeAll of this stuff that has been used.
JonYeah. Yeah.
GeorgeYou look at a show like um like Family Guy that parodied Star Wars, which, by the way, mad Magazine got into a little bit of trouble with George Lucas.
JonRight.
MoOh, yeah.
GeorgeSo ah they did um ah parody of Empire Strikes Back.
MoOh, yes, I know this one.
JonMm-hmm.
GeorgeRight? And it’s a very famous one. We all know it. ah It’s funny, though, because the lawyers from Lucasfilm sent a letter saying, you better take this off the stands, destroy all the plates that printed this magazine, and we want a cut of everything you’ve sold of it.
JonUh-huh.
JonOoh.
GeorgeWell, just so happened the lawyers didn’t know that George Lucas had already written a mad magazine saying how much he loved it.
Jonhu damn lawyers
GeorgeAnd so, So the publisher of Mad Magazine, he wrote, well, it looks like your boss is okay with this and faxed them a copy of what he had already sent them and they never heard from them again.
Jonoh what a baller move well done mad magazine oh that right right
Moyeah That was the end of it.
GeorgeWell, cause he had,
MoWell, well done, George Lucas, too, for like taking it for what is what it is, right? it’s it’s And I said, parody is almost like appreciation that your thing is worth parodying.
Georgeah
MoThat’s how good it is.
JonMm-hmm. Well, imitation, highest form of pla flattery.
Georgewell because he had
JonAnd it’s not just imitation. It’s imitation and poking fun. We love it. Let’s make fun of it. Yeah.
MoYes.
GeorgeI mean, in Lucas’s letter, he’d even called out the people, the artist and the writer. He said, they’re the Leonardo da Vinci and George Bernard Shaw of comic satire. So that gets sent back to his lawyers like, guess this is okay.
MoHis lawyer’s probably pissed.
GeorgeIt’s been signed off on.
MoYes.
JonYeah. And I think that plays directly into, as I said, it was often deeper than superficial parody.
Georgeso
JonSo Lucas probably saw in it how much they understood and knew about his work to be able to poke fun at deeper level knowledge.
MoMm-hmm.
JonYou know, I think that’s great.
GeorgeYou know, you guys talked a little bit earlier about how Alfred e Newman was grabbed from some postcards and made the mascot, right?
JonYeah. Mm hmm.
GeorgeWell, there was a lawsuit over that by the person who created it.
MoMm-hmm.
Jonokay
MoYeah.
George1914, the Court of Appeals held up. Mad Magazine was able to keep that. um They produced all the examples of what they’ve done and how that character had been in popular culture and everything. So
JonMm-hmm.
Georgeit ended up being a nothing lawsuit, but each time Mad Magazine was faced with some kind of legal stumbling block, they overcame it.
GeorgeAnd I think that’s one of the reasons why the magazine lasted as long as it did, because it was just so well liked and so well received, but they also set these precedents that we now get to enjoy the benefits of years and years later.
MoYeah.
JonAnd stood their ground and didn’t buckle and fought back.
GeorgeYeah.
JonAnd yeah, we’re we’re all better for it.
Moyeah
JonWho’d have thought goofy little magazine like that actually helped to shape laws that we benefit from. Isn’t that great? Oh, so look, it was kind of in the model of National Lampoon, right? it was a different kind of parody on National Lampoon was more cultural parody, whereas his Mad was more, you know, social and pop culture parody.
JonBut National Lampoon was making a killing on, making other media, TV shows and movies and stuff, right?
MoMm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
JonSo MADD tried to take a hand at it. In 1974, they did an animated pilot for ABC, but it never aired. And you probably know why.
JonInterestingly, MADD magazine famously never had advertising because they just weren’t, they were worried about upsetting advertisers because then you had to be careful, tiptoe around them, you know?
GeorgeMm-hmm.
JonSo they just never did it. Well, ABC was worried about upsetting its sponsors because so much of the stuff in there, there was a particular scene that made fun of ah a new car and Ford was one of their sponsors. Like, oh, this a little too close to home.
JonSo just never saw the light of day. Doesn’t mean it wasn’t good. It means ABC got cold feet. um There was another TV. There was yet another TV pilot in the late 80s. I’m not sure if that was animated or live action, but It just never aired and was lost. Like it is yet to materialize. People are still, it’s like this Holy grail.
JonYou know, we’d love to see it if you could.
MoWith 74 one, was that ever out there anywhere? is that also lost?
JonWell, you can, you can see it. Yeah. But it never aired.
MoYou can’t see that one?
JonYeah. Yeah. The 1970 animated one you can go and find.
MoGot it. Okay. Okay.
Jonit’s probably on YouTube. We’ll look for a link for you.
MoAll right.
JonYeah. Yeah. But mean, they, they tried. They just didn’t, they weren’t able to land like national lampoon did.
GeorgeYou know, they finally did get it right in 1995, though.
JonOh, yeah.
GeorgeThey did a sketch comedy show called Mad TV starting in 1995.
MoMm hmm. I
GeorgeI didn’t realize this, but it apparently ran for 14 seasons up until 2009.
JonYeah.
Modidn’t know it was that long.
JonMm-hmm.
GeorgeI kind of stopped watching it around the early 2000s, I thought.
MoHoly cow.
Georgeah The original cast, I’m going to read through this list, Deborah Wilson, Nicole Sullivan, Artie Lang, Mary Shearer, Brian Callen, and then the last three are three of my favorites to come out of this show.
JonMm-hmm. Yep.
GeorgePhil Lamar, Orlando Jones, and Dave Herman.
JonYep.
GeorgeNow, two of those guys were in office space. Orlando Jones played the drug dealer selling magazines, which I found funny that he was on the show.
JonYep.
MoOh, yeah.
JonYep.
MoFunny. hmm.
Jonhe
GeorgeDavid Herman was, of course, the nerdy of the nerdy guy of the trio that was setting up the money thing to get the percentages, fractions of a penny from the bank, and he messed up by putting a decimal point in their wrong place.
JonSuperman 3! superman three
GeorgeRight, exactly. But this series was so brilliant, and it was so on par with what Mad Magazine was that it felt to me like…
Georgean adult extension of the magazine I grew up loving. And it made it okay because it’s 95, so I’m 23, 24 at this point.
Georgeit It made it okay for me to watch it because it was the thing I loved when I was a kid just now in live form. They even did spy versus spy cartoons in the little interstitials.
MoOh, yeah.
JonI remember. Yeah. Yeah.
GeorgeSo yeah, I loved it.
MoThis is cool.
GeorgeIt was brilliant.
JonWell, another parallel to National Lampoon. So Saturday Night Live was very much ripoff of National Lampoon’s radio hour they had done.
JonAnd a lot of the actors like Belushi and Chase came right on a National Lampoon and started this show. So Mad TV doing a show was another attempt at them trying to do a National Lampoon copy. And it finally landed.
Jonah Two more actors you didn’t list, George, and I’m stunned, actually joined a little bit later in the the run. Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele.
GeorgeYeah.
JonThey got their start on that show.
Mous Yeah. Yeah.
JonWell, not their start, but they they rocketed to so popularity on that show, right?
GeorgeThey did.
MoYeah.
GeorgeI mean, yeah, you had a lot of them Michael McDonald, probably one of the most famous characters to come out of the show, was Stuart, the adult child.
JonMm-hmm. Yep.
Moyes
GeorgeStop! I mean, you’ve got Aerie Spears came out of that show, Mo Collins, Bobby Lee.
JonDamn.
Georgei mean, it’s just a crazy amount. And I guess… The longevity, 14 years. I’ve got to go add this to my Plex server now so I can go back and watch these things. But holy crap, was that series not just influential, but brilliantly done.
GeorgeThe thing that gets me, I completely forgot who was one of the main producers of the show. Quincy Jones.
JonWas he?
GeorgeHe was one of the guys that bought the rights to the magazine and therefore got to produce the show.
MoOh, really?
JonOh.
JonHuh.
GeorgeSo, yeah, just just a great series. If you haven’t checked out, especially the early ones, I highly recommend finding them on YouTube somewhere.
JonYep.
JonIt’s not just an SNL clone. It’s a very different tone.
GeorgeOh, no.
MoYeah.
JonIt’s a very different tone, which is great.
GeorgeYeah.
JonYeah.
GeorgeYeah, it’s not it’s not live.
JonNo, no.
GeorgeNot, not, I don’t think so.
JonFor one thing, right.
GeorgeYeah.
JonNo, no, it’s not.
Moyeah No, it wasn’t live.
JonIt’s a sketch show, but it’s, yeah.
Mowas pre-recorded. Yeah.
GeorgeYeah.
JonYep. Yep. but So more ways of them spreading out. George, you talk about your affinity for spy versus spy. You you mentioned earlier briefly, the video game. I played it on my Atari home computer.
JonAnd it was a split screen. Two players would run around this house and you could put traps.
GeorgeRight.
JonYou could put a, you know, I don’t know, something electrical in the fish tank or put a bomb over the door or put a ah an anvil over, you know an entryway or something.
GeorgeMm hmm.
JonAnd you were trying to set up a scenario where your opponent, the black or white spy, would come in and he would get caught. And it was a very popular game. It was on multiple platforms. Like you said, ah Commodore got it.
Jonah the Atari got it. And I think it even got a remake later on. And you I think you remembered rightly, it might have gotten ah an Amiga port later on too, which was a logical coming out of 64.
JonLogical coming out of the Commodore 64. But yeah I remember playing it. And I think you could play single player, but it was the best when you played with another person on another joystick and trying to, because you could look and see what they were doing, but you were too busy doing your own thing.
JonYou know, and then you open a door and go, just like, get electrocuted or something. Yeah, it was great.
Georgeif
Moyeah Speaking of board games, there was also a mad board game that came out in 79, actually.
JonOh, yeah. you
Moum And I i got to find a copy of this because remember playing as a kid. It was basically making fun of every other board game out there.
JonDid you?
MoYou know, it was a parody of a board game where it had things like your goal.
JonIt was a parody of a board game. Perfect.
MoYou started with $10,000 and your goal was to lose all your money. First one, lose all your money wins.
JonPerfect.
MoAnd they had things like, you know, if you land on a certain spot, if somebody has their elbow on the table, you could lose $500, you know yeah You know, he had cards like said, like, you know, stand up and imitate your favorite animal and lose $2,000. Or, you know this card only completed um can be played on Friday.
MoI mean, it was just just absurd rules.
JonYeah.
MoIt’s at a point where it’s like the game itself was just a fun experience. No one really cared who won, you know, because it was just a fun game to play.
Jonwell It’s like a party game almost, right It’s goofing off.
MoYeah, it is.
JonYeah.
Georgeright
MoIt’s just totally goofing off. And I tell you, I got to find a copy of that game.
JonSure.
MoI have the, if they still make it or not, but I’m going look.
JonOh, they don’t make it anymore, but I see it occasionally at thrift stores, but I’ve never picked it up.
MoOK.
JonAnd now it maybe I will because I see it occasionally.
MoYeah, absolutely.
JonYeah. if If I see a second one, I’ll get you a copy.
MoAll right, sounds good.
JonYeah. Yeah. ah Let’s see some more media. I love covering the media that they did. Didn’t realize this in 1980, they did a motion picture called up the Academy.
GeorgeOh, that was theirs.
Moand was I didn’t know that was theirs.
JonYes.
GeorgeWow. Wow.
JonRight. So this was an coincidental naming. It’s kind of like police Academy or stripes. It’s not the Academy, meaning the Academy of motion picture and arts, right? It was making fun of the movie industry is what they were making fun of the movie bombed, but it was,
GeorgeRight. wow.
Jonmaybe best known for the the small star who was in it, he a much bigger star. Ralph Macchio was in this.
Georgeah wow
Jonyeah as He was a kid. He had to be like 13, 14. It was a young, young man. I saw a picture. I didn’t write it down, but his character’s name is like Chooch or Gooch or Gunch or was real silly name. but So they did that one. It flopped. I mean, again, they saw, you know people were doing stripes and National Lampoon were doing stuff.
JonGo ahead.
GeorgeSo I’m sorry, I don’t mean to interrupt, but I’m just laughing because you said Ralph Macchio was so young. He must’ve been like 13 or 14. That motherfucker was 20 years old when that movie came out.
JonHe was 20 years old.
GeorgeRalph Macchio literally was Paul Rudd before there was a Paul Rudd.
Moyeah
Moah Paul Rudd, yeah.
JonHe looked 12. I can’t believe it.
GeorgeI’m telling you, he was born in 61. That’s what made me laugh.
JonWow! Unbelievable. Well, alright, well, whatever. And then, this is the one that I think you should check out. In 2010, when I wasn’t paying attention to Mad Much anymore, Cartoon Network picked up the license, and this is the one I mentioned, Mo, that the the opening looks like an animated fold-in, right?
MoYeah.
JonAnd it’s basically, they they kind of marked as a robot chicken for kids. Not to say it was all… action figures necessarily, but it was mashups of things.
JonSo this ran for four seasons in the 20 teens.
GeorgeMmm.
JonI had no idea. And I watched a couple episodes. You can find it out there. So for example, what they did, there was one that was all about, it was kind of a avatar based.
JonSo really it was a mashup of all of the blue characters. So there was making fun of avatar. And then on their board of directors was like Papa Smurf. right? Because he’s blue.
GeorgeHa ha ha ha ha.
JonAnd then who else did I see? There were three or four blue characters.
MoYeah.
JonI’m like, oh yeah, that’s a blue character. And they just meshed in all these different ones and they would put them together. There was one, it was a combination of a CSI, And iCarly called CSI Carly, where it was the goofy girls from iCarly at a crime scene trying to solve this murder.
JonAnd it was just a mix up of animation and stop motion and all kinds of stuff like that. I saw a ShamWow commercial that was actually a SpongeWow. And it was ah SpongeBob SquarePants. And they were mopping up stuff with him.
JonIt was making fun of all kinds of stuff in the 2010s. And they continue to do it. Now, some of the stuff has aged a little bit. you know It’s pop culture of the era, but still funny and worth checking out. I’d recommend it.
MoYeah. I mean, I guess want to end because, you Mad Magazine, obviously it’s not around anymore. not Not nearly the form it was.
JonNot like we remember it.
MoNot like we remember.
JonYeah.
Moum Because Gaines, you know, the guy who was really the the heart of that magazine, he died in 92, you know, 70.
JonMm-hmm. Oh.
MoAnd as just in research, I found that basically he was terrible at giving raises, but he was awesome at like treating his employees really well.
JonMm-hmm.
Moyou know taking him on trips and doing things for them and helping him out and all this stuff. um And also, he was the one that said they you know gave him the freedom to do what they want.
JonMm-hmm.
MoYou know, unfortunately, when he died, the suits came in, took it over, decided to fix it, you know.
Jonye
MoUm…
JonNot broken.
MoCirculation dropped from the millions down to 200,000. you know They started putting real ads actually in the magazine, like actual ads.
GeorgeRight.
MoThey changed it to color instead of black and white. You know, whereas before just the just the cover was color, like everything else is black and white.
GeorgeRight.
JonRight.
MoThey changed the whole thing to color.
JonYep.
MoSo then they stopped actually doing printing in 2018 because, you know, they just basically they, you know, because it was never like monthly. It’s always like eight times a year or it’s like some sort of random actually in a way.
GeorgeRight.
JonMm-hmm.
MoThen it became, you know, four times a year, then two times a year, then once a year, then finally it just stopped it altogether.
JonYeah.
MoSo now it’s pretty much just a digital thing. And it’s a brand really at this point, you know, where things like, you know, the mad TV show and things are kind of taking advantage of the brand and what it represents.
JonYou
GeorgeRight. Yeah.
MoBut, you know, unfortunately he said the magazine as it stands doesn’t really exist today.
Jonyou know what’s cool, though, is that you can still, like, I i remember even probably in the and the teens, as it was fading out a little bit, You could buy DVD-ROMs of like complete collections of back catalogs of it, and you could flip through and read PDFs of it because they’re still good.
JonEven though even though it’s pop culture of the era, if you live through that era, it’s still enjoyable and it’s still funny.
MoOh, yeah.
Georgeyeah
JonSo it’s one of those things that, yeah, we can lament that it’s not around like it used to be, but it hasn’t gone anywhere. You haven’t read every issue. They’re still out there for you to enjoy.
GeorgeNo, i I kind of want to go on eBay now and start buying Mad Magazine lots after doing this episode.
MoIt’s true.
MoYeah, really, don’t you?
GeorgeI’m sure it’ll cost me too much, but God, I kind of want a collection of Mad Magazines from the time, like, I don’t want from the 60s.
JonIt’s…
GeorgeI won’t really relate to them, but from like when I was born, like 71 till like 2000s or something.
MoYeah.
JonMm-hmm.
MoMm hmm.
JonYeah.
MoYeah, like the Star Wars ones, those are the ones I’d want to find.
JonYeah.
GeorgeOh, yeah, yeah.
MoThe Star War parodies and stuff.
JonYeah. I’ll pick one up occasionally. Like, every once in a while, they will print something. You know, like how they a special, you know, 60-year anniversary or whatever.
MoMm hmm.
GeorgeYeah, like at the cashier at Publix at the register, yeah.
JonYes, yeah, exactly. at Walgreens, and it’s the history of Prince and Mad Magazine. A special issue, whatever. You’ll see that kind of thing. It’s two magazines, by the way Those aren’t the same magazine that I suggested.
JonYeah, but anyway, fourth listener, we hope we have resurrected some memories of Mad Magazine for you. There’s plenty we didn’t talk about. If you had a favorite part or a favorite facet of Mad, drop us a line.
JonPodcast at genxgrownup.com. We’d love to hear from you. ah Before we… Before we bounce out of the show there, I want to take just a second to thank another longtime legacy supporter over on Patreon.
Moyou
JonFor years and years now, a huge super fan of Gen X grown-up, Marcus Taylor, has been a supporter. Every time we offered a higher tier to support us at, he was the first to jump in.
JonHe’s just super committed. Now, he’s a personal friend of ours as well. And not in no way does that commit him to support us, but he believes in the things that we do. He listens to the show regularly.
JonHe loves what we do and how we do it and how we deliver it. He’s tried to start his own podcast in the past because he’s so enamored by the conversations that we have. He’s like, I i want to do that. I think you guys are having so much fun.
JonMarcus, thank you for the support that you give. Listener, if you would like to join Marcus and this legion of other amazing supporters that help keep us on the air and on YouTube and on the web, just head over to patreon.com slash Gen X Grown Up.
Moyou
JonOpen up your heart and your wallet. Take a lead from Marcus. Help us out a little bit for as little as a dollar a month. That’s all it takes. We sure would appreciate you. That is going to wrap it up for this edition of the Backtrack.
JonThat is going to wrap it up for this Backtrack edition of the Gen X Grown Up podcast. Don’t worry. We’ll have another one coming your way in two weeks. And next week is the standard edition of our show. Until then, I am John.
Jonah George, thank you so much for being here.
GeorgeYes, sir.
JonMo, you know I appreciate you.
MoAlways fun, man.
JonFourth listener, you’re who we all appreciate most of all, though. We can’t wait to talk to you again next time. Bye-bye.
GeorgeSee you guys.
MoTake care
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About The Author

Mo As someone who barely manages to squeeze in as a GenXer my memories include more of the 70's than those younger GenXers. Reading and movies are my passions with some video gaming thrown in there for good measure!

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