MAD Magazine

I recently revived an interest in a very old friend, MAD Magazine. I almost literally grew up with this publication, the first copies I read were in the late 70's when my father was still buying them and I read it almost religiously until the very early 90's when I felt the art and writing were straying from what I considered prime material.

A couple weeks back I was in a comic book store and stumbled across a book that collected a bunch of MAD Oscar winner movie spoofs; I figured for 10 bucks how can I go wrong. Although many of them predated my original reading or postdated when I stopped it still managed to bring back fond memories and drove me to look for current publications.

One stop at their site later I knew I had to get reading this magazine again, however I was less than thrilled to find I couldn't get my hands on a copy anyplace. Apparently they have moved to a quarterly publishing scheme and the new issues weren't out until the beginning of May, at which point I got my new copy from a drugstore magazine rack (just like when I was a kid).

Then a strange thing happened this weekend. My family is getting ready to move so I was going through some boxes of books and papers buried in our basement when lo and behold I ran across a copy of Mad Magazine from 1983 (missing the cover like all true childhood treasures) featuring, among other things, spoofs of Tootsie and The Dark Crystal (both released in late 1982). I read it from missing cover to missing cover and have to say the magic is still there.

OK, maybe it's not 100% what it used to be, but times change and I think they have evolved as well as can be expected. My advice is, if you're thinking about new reading material give MAD a try, it's just good fun.

By the way, if you want an interesting story check out the bio on William Gaines, the creator and Publisher of Mad Magazine, you'll even find out why it's always been titles "MAD Magazine" instead of just "MAD"