Posted on 07/06/2019 3:05:34 PM PDT by jmcenanly
The comic magazine's ability to rib culture, politics, and business shaped the boomer mentality, and we should be grateful.The comics community is abuzz with the news that Mad magazine will, after two more issues, cease publication of original material and abandon newsstand distribution, becoming a reprint title available only in comic book shops (with the exception, Hollywood Reporter reports, of one special issue a year of new content).
Mad began life as a comic book in 1952, the brainchild of then-obscure New York cartoonist Harvey Kurtzman, published by William Gaines' E.C. Comics. Through his work in Mad's formative years and at later humor magazines he launched—Trump (published by Kurtzman superfan Hugh Hefner, and not related to Donald), Humbug, and Help!—Kurtzman became a culture god to a generation of baby boomers who eagerly lapped up a brilliant, acrid, prickly adult with a fresh, warbly-wicked cartooning style to solidify and reify their inchoate sense that aspects of adult American culture were more absurd, more ersatz, sometimes even reprehensible, than their parents, schools, churches, or leaders wanted them to know.
(Excerpt) Read more at reason.com ...
A shame. I loved it growing up.
Like everything else they touch, libs f***ed up something good.
A bit of my childhood dies. I read Mad Magazine from 10 years old in 1966 to past college.
Very sharp, non-partisan humor that skewered all parties. It’d never fly in today’s PC culture. They satirized blacks, Europeans, Native Americans, Asians, rich, poor, cultured, uncultured. I haven’t subscribed to a magazine in about 30 years, but an equivalent to Mad, I might.
I would get an issue every time I had the money. This was during the 50s and early 60s. Mother didn’t approve but still let me buy them.
The thing which made them different was they made fun of everybody.
There was a cartoon captioned “in the bathroom alone for the first time”. A huge dude washes his hands and goes to the paper towel dispenser the sign says pull down tear up. He’s dressed in a little junior’s sailor shorts suit. When he turns to leave, the towel dispenser is ripped off the wall, crumped and in pieces. RIP MAD Magazine.
I read the very first issue when it first came out, in 1952 (I was a freshman in high school).
My mother said it would rot my mind.
She was right, but the ferment had already begun....
I remember those early issues. They were the size of a comic book and the "logo" read 'Humor In A Jugular Vein'.
I one I really liked was "BatBoy & Ruben" but those others were good too. LOL
From the slums of Baltic Avenue,
‘Round to Boardwalk and Park Place,
We will buy up all the properties,
Building hotels on every space,
We will drive our foes to bankruptcy,
If they fail to pay the price.
But we cannot even start the game,
‘Til somebody finds the dice.
Roll the ball,
Roll the ball, roll the ball, roll the ball,
It’s a crucial frame, now,
So take good aim, now,
And we would have won if you let go of the ball!
On you shooters,
On you shooters,
Get down on your knees,
Roll a seven,
Roll eleven,
...
This poster has forgotten the rest.
Mad’s humor lost its cutting edge years ago. It’s too bad they weren’t able to navigate through the PC minefield of liberal bias. For me, South Park has long since picked up the torch. If you can’t rip on everyone and everything, you’re not qualified to do satire.
A few lines from when “The Sound Of Music” was popular:
The hiiiills are aliiive
With the sound of money
(The rest was really funny, but I forgot it.)
I loved that magazine.
Me too. Was enjoyable to read. Loved “Spy vs Spy”...
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