MAD, Bad and Depressing To Know

About two weeks ago I was surprised to receive an unexpected, anonymous-looking package, which at first I thought might be from the vestiges of Bongo Comics. That's because a staffer from Bongo reached out to former contributors some months ago with the promise of a holiday gift being sent out, and while I was hoping it was the Treehouse of Horror Omnibus that came out last year (and which has our work in it), I wouldn't have been shocked to see it was some random magazine or greeting card or who the heck knows. As it turned out, the package contained contributor copies of MAD #30*.

I wasn't shocked by seeing "new' MAD comps but I was pretty surprised. I've long put MAD out of my mind, not only as a client but as an ongoing concern. Even though we did new artwork for an article in the 7th issue of the relaunch (which seems like ten or fifteen years ago rather than four, the way time works now), it hasn't felt as if it actually existed as a living, breathing entity. Maybe that's because it kind of isn't. It's still a physical publication, it still looks like MAD, but it's less a living entity and more like a phantom haunting the few magazine racks it's spotted at with the dependency of a Loveland Frog sighting. I think I've seen it one or twice on a supermarket magazine rack since MAD was resurrected as a bi-monthly, mostly-reprint revenant.

Hey, kids! Second Life! Google it! Google all the jokes! (At least the pop culture references are still identifiable fifteen years later. Wait, um, maybe that's also indictive of something kind of depressing...)

I used to love getting our comps and flipping through the new issue to see how our work printed. It was always a kick, even if I would see a drawing I wish I'd approached differently or an ink line (or ten) that wasn't up to snuff. Flipping through this issue was more like a depressing post-mortem. MAD is even more of a braindead zombie than when I last saw an issue, it's just a shambling, pathetic, terribly depressing affair. Out of 23 features, two were new (three if you count the MAD fold-In, which I didn't know was continued with a new artist after Al Jaffee's retirement).

The issue "Takes Apart Technology", and maybe it succeeds, posing as a vintage magazine in 2023. The piece we contributed to was  MAD's 50 Worst Things About The Internet. The article first appeared in 2008. 2023 teenagers who somehow find themselves in front of MAD #30 will be treated to jokes about Second Life, MapQuest and Classmates. com advertisements. There are pieces from 1952, 1961, 1978 and 1986. Most of it's reprinted from the previous ten years or so. As a former contributor (and current, yeesh) and fan, it's just soul-crushing to go through. It's a mess of dated jokes, weak jokes and obscure references. I don't know who this is for. Modern kids and teens don't need this, unless they're loser geeks like me who are considering a cartooning career and want to see a ton of curated art styles for $6. Longtime die-hard MAD collectors already have all this stuff. Several times over, when it comes to Kurtzman-era reprints. $6 for two articles and a fold-in (not by Jaffee, although don't worry Jaffe fans, he's in there, from 1978) seems bonkers even for "complete run" maniacs. There isn't even a letters page anymore, which erases the feeling of a community, something which EC and MAD was expert at. They could just reprint old letters to the old articles, which would add to the feeling you're at a store closing or a remnant sale while turning the pages.

People have long debated whether MAD stopped being funny decades ago, which invariably brings in the position that MAD is funny when you first come upon it as a kid, and eventually you move on (except for the completists, bless 'em). I think there's a lot to that, although I also think MAD declined in quantifiable ways over time (what humor magazine or legacy comic doesn't fade, or at least doesn't have high and low periods). The shine has been off the apple for a very long time, but there's always been some young readers still reading MAD. Of course, circulation suffered over the decades, and in the last twenty years or more the magazine seemed like an anachronism. The editorial approach barely changed and seemed quaint (if not creaky, or antiquated), and the magazine was put into various no-win positions after accepting advertising and trying to seem edgy to an audience of kids playing Grand Theft Auto while sexting (Ha ha, see, I can toss off a dated tech joke or two myself. because I'm old and unfunny, like MAD!). It did seemingly little to attract non-white readers, it was still largely a sniggling boy's magazine. But even so, when I was contributing (white, male, cis, old, increasingly unfunny and irrelevant, perfect for MAD), the circulation was over 200,000 (iirc), which was way more than most of what DC Comics titles was selling (of course, MAD had an expensive staff and paid higher rates, especially to the veteran Gang of Idiots, so, there's that). But MAD was MAD, and in many people's opinion, was a name and entity to protect and rebuild, not gut and treat like a mid-carder silver age artist sitting alone in artist's alley at a convention.

I don't know where I'm going with this. It doesn't matter. It's more corporate product, it's practically an A.I. magazine. It's cut rate copyright-keeping and merchandising.  Whatever you think about MAD not being funny at whatever time you actually cared about such a thing, MAD nowadays is just a dead mall with the store logos still attached. On the one hand, it's kind of nice to see it's still around, but on the other, it's a lot like a beloved and way-past-their-prime wrestler brought back for a goofy nostalgia match. Seeing them in person is swell, watching the match is cringe-inducing.

MAD should be called DAD, or SAD, or, if I was in charge of this misbegotten nostalgia act, MISHEGAS. MAD's second life is as good as their reprinted Second Life gags. You can't go back, and we all gotta go forward until we're outdated and finally dead. MAD is a slow-walking zombie, hard to look at, easy to avoid. For thi incarnation of MAD, dead is better. 

But we'll always have the MAD of our childhood.

Unless we were too cool for it in the first place.

I wasn't. Which is why I guess this hurts.

(*Five months later, we're still waiting for whatever it was that Bongo was supposedly sending out for the holidays. What a wacky business, comics is!)