Some time in 1965 or 66, my best friend and I (11 or 12 yo) had a day off from school. His dad worked in NYC, so went in with him. We were both huge fans of MAD, so while his dad was working, we walked down to MADison Ave. and found the office (the address was printed right in the magazine!) It was supposed to be a day off for them too, but a couple came in to work, so we walked right in. It was as crazy as you could imagine, I always remember King Kong looking in through one of the windows, and a big tub of water with a faucet hanging above it by only a piece of string, continuously running water into the tub. We walked down a long hallway, where every cover to date was framed and hung on the walls. We saw someone at a drawing board, walked in and said hi, and he says, "Hi, I'm Don Martin." He walked us around for a few minutes, then said he had to get back to work. A day I will never forget.
Hello and thanks for your Mad memory. And particularly your encounter with the great man himself. I used to imagine he looked like one of his characters, complete with folding feet. I dare say that wasn't actually the case.
What a time to be alive in a different America! Then------and now. I was born in 1960---3 yrs before the Kennedy assassination. The 60s and 70s were carefree growing up. Truly a blast.
What's crazy, is that even though I was basically a kid, I remember virtually EVERY single artist mentioned here, AND their styles as well. Some of these insanely talented individuals are some of the greatest illustrators EVER. I haven't picked up a MAD mag in decades but almost every artist here I distinctly remember.
Hello and tanks for your comment. All my issues - mostly 70s - eventually fell to bits, but I still have my collection of digest paperbacks such as Son of Mad. And they remain among my most treasured possessions.
Hello again and thanks for watching. Being an American magazine maybe there will be a museum. Seems to me it's Britain and to a lesser extent the rest of Europe who are cavalier about the visual treasures that were created by their sons and daughters.
At the very least a well-funded and managed archive and a traveling exhibition! It appears The Internet Archive's Wayback Machine has a digitized "Mad Magazine Collection" added via the "Hybrid Philosophy Collection". Their "Magazine Rack" has a collection for Cracked as well. I also took a quick peek at the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) and chuckled to see that the first issue of Mad Magazine was part of a records series from a U.S. Senate Committee.
Mad magazine helped get me through my childhood and teen years, I remember all of the artists mentioned even though I haven't seen an issue in decades.
I literally grew up with MAD. "Twas Brillo and the GE Stove did Proctor Gamble through the Glade..." At 70 one of my most treasured books is "MAD for Decades." Thanks for the video...
Unique, laugh inducing nostalgia here. Well edited and narrated. Great work😆 and professionally produced. I haven't seen these artists' work in decades.
Amazes since childhood how some people, really artists, have such talend to draw instantly recognizable caricactures. MAD was an inspiration and source of joy.
It was "subversive" (in a good way). I am politically conservative, no matter "Mad" shoved everyone's nose into the BS on any "side". I wish we had more of that NOW. I love "The Babylon Bee", (Conservative FAKE "news") But, I would also dig a liberal version. "Mad" always had you on either side of the aisle.
The Babylon Bee is indeed the closest thing to the old Mad, which was the first magazine I ever subscribed to. These days it’s awfully hard to imagine a left wing version, as the farther left you move, the less sense of humor you exhibit.
You really nailed at showcasing the original and great talent M.A.D. magazine acquired througout its life.I became hooked while playing Spy vs Spy on the venerable C64 back in 1984 and curiosity made me dig the magazine.Thumbs up!
@ale rey.... magazine?... heck I still got all my C-64's and Amigas and Games all in storage.. I was a computer geek for about 8 years from '86 to '94.. 'til the Amiga well about ran dry...
In the Fifties the drive for conformity was unchecked, not that I would have dared speak against it. I was a smarmy little apple-polisher who always sought approval from authority. So tight were my personal fences that I loved Dell comics and thought Marx comics were written for less respectable kids than I meant to be. Imagine the impact of Mad on such a rule-loving kid. I was shocked but intrigued by the first copies I saw, especially by the work of Don Martin, and thus did Mad sew seeds that much later erupted in social criticism and independent thinking.
Hello and that's an interesting personal response to the video. I didn't get sight of Mad until the early 60s so it chimed perfectly with my rebel without a clue leanings, love of beatgroups and blues and it was a powerful influence on my own feeble attempts at cartoon illustration. I still treaure the paperback volumes I picked up at the time.
While counting up on the trolleys at northeastern headed towards State College. I was obliviously wasting time holding on to the little thing overhead that you hang on to so you don't fall down when there's too many people on the train which was almost all the time.
Thanks muchly Pete! When we left Halifax in 1968 I was 14 and the only thing I brought to Oz was a huge collection of Mad magazines, of which I had studied every panel. I stupidly lent them to another kid in the hostel where we were dumped in Adelaide. The kid came round crying the next day to say his dad had burned them all! He had either some prejudices or no tolerance for satire I guess. Life changed so quickly after that so I hadn't thought about it much until I saw this. What a trip!
Hello and aaargh! the burning of books is bad enough, but copies of Mad??? All my mags fell to bits in the end (just like their owner) but I've still got my collection of small paperback compilations. And I still look at them regularly if I need a laugh.
Thanks for this retrospective look at Mad. It was a satisfying look back on the amazing artists and creative talent that made Mad Magazine a breed a part.
I first learned of the existence of MAD in abut 1970 and I read it semi-regularly through the rest of the decade. I owe Frank Jacobs a great debt: I started doing song parodies based on his work back then (and I still do them now). I loved the artwork of Al Jaffee, Don Martin, Dave Berg, and Mort Drucker. As you said, perhaps gone, NEVER forgotten.
I'm too young to have experienced Mad's golden years of the 50s and 60s, but my mom would always come home from rummage sales with the paperback reprints whenever she'd come across them. I would constantly leaf through them, marveling at the art. So much so that they all basically disintegrated from overuse. I don't think there's ever been a more awe inspiring collection of artistic and comedic talent. Mad is part of the reason why I chose a career as a designer and illustrator.
Hello again and thanks again. Those Mad paperbacks (and the magzines themselves) were a major formative influence on me when I decided I had to be an illustrator. Sadly not much of their talent rubbed off.
@@dmark1922 I do not recall him saying his mother read the stuff... but mine did... I bought my first one at the age of 8 in march of 1964... it showed Alfred busting thru a trampoline upside down... issue 87 I think it was... I bought it for 25 cents... mom and I used to walk to the market back then.. she was glancing at it while we were walking home... and when we got home she finished going thru it... she thought it was great... she was a smoker... and they had a parody regarding cigarettes in this issue... she thought it was the greatest most funniest thing she'd ever read... and I felt kind of proud.. picking up a magazine at 8 years old that an adult was impressed with... a win/win situation..
Thank you so much for this retrospective of the creative people who were instrumental in the making of MAD magazine. From 1965, when I was 8 years old, through 1970 I had a subscription to MAD. I was a huge fan and looked forward to each new issue. I thought the magazine was brilliant then and I still feel that way now. You did a superb job of presenting the history of the magazine and briefly acknowledging the contributions made by each player. I learned so much! It’s wonderful to find someone else who appreciates the talent that went into the making of MAD.
Hello and I'm very grateful for your positive reponse to this video. It's a subject particularly close to my own heart, and I was very influenced by these illustrators in my own career. Sadly not enough of the influence dubbed off...
Mad had some of the best cartoons, political comments, movie reviews, etc of any magazine I ever read. I might not have seen the movie, or cared for the politician, but I loved what they presented. I also loved the art work. Many of those artists were true genius at work. To take reality and draw it as satire is not all that easy yet they did it month after month. My kids ask me what was it and it is really hard to explain at times. You just have to show them.
Hi again, and I spent most of my younger years trying to emulate the work of Jack Davis in particular. Unfortunately not enough of his influence rubbed off on me.
So many memories, it was my brother's magazine but I couldn't wait until he had read it and I got my hands on it with the warning, if mum catches you I didn't give it you ha! I didn't get all the jokes for sure but the mixture of artwork was fabulous.
Hello again and it seems there are a vast number of people of some maturity who grew up with Mad magazine. It was a teenage obsession of mine and I still own quite a few of the small format books they issued in the sixties. They are falling apart a bit by now, just like me, but they still raise a laugh.
All the artists I grew up with and learned from. I remember learning to draw Don Martin figures when I was 11 or 12 and would fill my school notebooks with badly drawn copies of characters. Now when I'm browsing in a used bookshop I always check to see if there maybe one of the reprint collections of Don Martin or Spy vs Spy or another of the great Mad artists. Well done and thank you, your series continues to inspire
Hi Michael and thanks for your input. I tend to avoid the word 'unique' but if ever it was needed it's to describe Don Martin's style. Even now it's rare for a day to go by without me finding a reason to browse my collection of paperback compilations.
Thank you for doing this. What an impact these artists and writers had on me! I couldn't wait for my brother to finish reading his copy of MAD so I could devour it and read it over and over again.
Hello and thanks a lot for your comment. Sadly my collection of magazines from the 60s and 70s fell apart but I still have my paperback collections and rarely does a day go by without me having another look.
In the late 60’s and through the 1970’s my Mother would happily purchase a Mad magazine for my brother and I. I would pour over the artwork and details of the cartoons even before I was able to read it. The artists were truly gifted, and once I could read it, I had huge pile of Mads that I went back and read every word. I cared only for Mad, and never even considered reading another comic book. As a 6 year old I read Mad, Newsweek, and Business Week and later on in the 1980’s, Forbes. Mad was the most educational, and sometimes Forbes. I miss all those wonderful artist. Their humor enriched me and gave me a view of the world that wouldn’t have happened otherwise.
Hello and many thanks for your comments. I remember that unlike others, you could read Mad again and again and still find something in the pictures you missed before. Their imagination seemed to be endless.
In 1960 my sister married and moved away. I was 8. She left behind her collection of MAD magazines she acquired while in college. My mother burned them.
I grew up reading the magazine through the late 60s through the 70s and into the 80s. I kinda grew away from it when I got married but still like to occasionally browse through one at the news stand. Then in the 2000s I remember picking one up but didn't recognize any of the artists. It just wasn't the same. All of those childhood memories and nostalgia were gone. Seeing this video brought back so many memories, and I could remember each of the artists and their styles. I remember trying to copy some of my favorites and practicing various line drawings and ink work while trying to develop my own style. Their talents were a great motivation for me as my art work grew and developed. I learned not all drawings have to be photorealistic or anatomically perfect for them to be appreciated. Their talent for humor and having a distinctive style made their work instantly recognizable for millions, and here it is decades later, still instantly invoking those memories.
Hello and thanks a lot for your comment. It seems Mad made a profound impression on many of us on both sides of the Atlantic. But as you observed nothing lasts forever and I must admit I stopped reading it as the 80s came around.
@Slayer Mack.... yes a lot of things changed with MAD over the years... I was kind of like you... but when Bill Gaines died in 1992. I started buing them again... with issue 314...... then I found a comic shop that someone had dumped about 200 issues.. at..all in mint shape and in vinyl... for about 1 dollar each.. so I bought all those up... at issue 323 I began subscribing so I would not miss an issue.. sadly about that time they started doing multiple covers..2 variant covers of the same issue.. so I still had to buy the one I did not get sent from the newsstand.. the trouble was.. sadly many times the MADs. hit the shelves before I got mine.. and if I waited too long.. either the stores were sold out of the one I needed or they were too beat up by being read on the stands to even bother with.. so.. sometimes even though I had a subscription I bought a few off of the stands.. they eventually stopped this thank goodness... bit you are correct.. I was saddened when they went to color... I liked it at first,..but then the novelty wore off... then they started accepting ads... it got to the point I was not sure if I was reading a parody or a junky ad..... until I kept reading.... but I kept with it... I now own all 550 ussyes.. plus 20 of the L.A. issues...
My introduction to MAD was on my 10th birthday. My friend who was a year older than myself had wrapped my gifts in pages of MAD magazine. My mother started reading them and liked it and gave me a subscription. I subscribed until about 1976, the year before I graduated high school. I just didn't think it was as good as it was before. Wish I had kept my collection of MAD, instead of selling them at garage sales.
Hello and many thanks for your comment about this video. I have to say I carried on buying Mad into the 1980s but you are right - it lost some of its appeal and manic appeal in later editions. All my mags rotted away but I've still got my paperback book editions.
@Julie Nielsen.... "Wish I had kept my collection of MAD, instead of selling them at garage sales". fortunately... in 1992 when Gaines died ....I went back and finished my collection.. I now have every issue... 1-550. .+ 20 issues from the new management.. out of L.A.
How ironic that MAD magazine was used as wrapping paper. It has been said that some of the manuscripts of J.S.Bach were used by his local butcher to wrap meat in.
@@kiwitrainguy oh... I never heard that about MAD being used as wrapping paper but it would not surprise me.. when I was a kid.. no one placed much value on comic books and collectibles like they do now except coins and stamps... in 1965 I could have picked up a copy of Action Comics #1.. for about 100.00.... now it's worth over 3 million... and I had a chance to buy some copies Amazing Fantasy #15.. the first appearance of Spiderman.... for 8.00 in mint condition.. now their worth about 100,000. each in mint......if I could go back in time those wrongs I would make right..
My father got me hooked on Mad in the late 70's. I bought them every month until the early 90's. Loved it then. Still love it now. Great video. Total watch through.
Nice to see the memes of yesteryear, hope this helps GenZ further realize that freedom is hard won and precious! I was late to the Mad Magazine game, but I can remember spending my allowance on individual copies in the grocery store in our small town. Even then there was a sense that this publication was risky compared to our normative British school system. This year I've been watching RU-vid censor the MxR Plays channel excessively, and I can't even imagine what Google censors would do if there was a creator like Mad Magazine on the platform... They'd be having kittens!
Hello and many thanks for your comments about Mad. Sadly we live in different - and many say less enjoyable times. Undoubtedly Mad would get cancelled by one lobby or another.
Didn't realize MAD was born the year I was! I love that publication. One of my striking memories at age 10 was ordering an "deal" in the magazine which offered a large number of publications including a hardback edition for a ridiculously low price. What a shock to find, when it arrived, that it was them clearing out their old stock. It was almost entirely artists I'd never seen before, and with a decidedly East Coast tone that was totally alien to me. I was born and raised in a rural Colorado town. At first I was disappointed. But I started reading and those became some of my favorite MAD editions. To this day, I say to myself, "Gee, ya sure kin mombo!" "Aw, shaddap, ya creep!"
Hello and I think about Mad like I think about Laurel and Hardy. Only a being with no soul could fail to find them funny. I've got the picture with that dialogue in it, somewhere.
That was a trip down memory lane, thank you! I was obsessed with Don Martin in my early teens. The humour was in all honesty fairly basic but his illustrations had me in stitches. I would scour seaside newsagents on our annual holiday for his compilation books. (Bizarrely, they seemed to be the only places to stock them). At one point I had them all, but now long since lost. How could I have been so careless with such treasures? Thank you Don for so many laughs.
Hello and not to rub salt in your wound but I still have an admittedly shabby collection of the Don Martin paperback editions, and they still crack me up. Oh those sound effects...
@@petebeard Ha! fair play, but don't worry, I topped up Mr Bezos's fortune last year by buying a beautiful hardback coffee table book of the best of Don Martin. It is literally a work of art. I'm sure you must have a copy of that as well?
@@richardbyrnes8398 I got that .... are you referring to the 2 volume set with the red slipcase...?... I bought it when it first came out... a few years back...
Oh how this brings back memories. I stared intently at each at each view you presented and tried to dig out a matching memory. Yes, some of them were during my Mad period. I remember how eagerly I dove into the latest issue--the artwork enriching my eyes, the satire and humor enlightening my mind. It really made me better. I recognize the names Drucker, Jaffe, Martin, Prohias, Berg, and many others. I wonder where did they come up with all that stuff? Watching your video, I realized how stimulating a good comic book--the stuff I grew up on--could be, far more stimulating than the junk--most CGI movies, entertainment, infotainment, imitation music[I call], whatever--all around us today . . Funny how I never quite got why they were so obsessed with Alfred E. Neuman, it was good to find out some of his background. They adopted him in 1954! The year I was born . .
Hello and thanks for your comment. On both sides of the Atlantic Mad had a profound influence on teenagers in particular for quite a few generations. And those teenegaers (especially me) have grown old. But I still read my collection of paperback editions and still find more to enjoy and admire. And regarding your reply to my reply to Catherine I'm not sure how but you seem to have misconstrued what I said. In essence it was that Britain and Europe are nothing like as committed to preserving the memory of their illustrators as in the USA.
Thanks and Cheers to you, Mr Beard, for assuring me the spark I felt from MAD as a youth was grounded. They WERE brilliant artists AND social analysts!
Hello and thanks for the comment. Mad hit me at the same time as blues music, shows such as the Beverly Hillbillies and the Untouchables, and all that Americana really saw me into what now passes for adulthood.
I just discovered your channel and it has quickly become a favorite! I've been looking into and getting inspiration from illustrators of the past recently and discovered your channel while searching for more info on Nell Brinkley. I would like to thank you for not only scratching my itch for more info on her but also introducing me to many other illustrators I had not yet heard of. Keep up the good work, I greatly look forward to your next video!
Thanks a lot. It's always nice to get encouragement from viewers. I'm fairly dumb when it comes to youtube but I think if you subscribe they notify you when a new video is uploaded. It tends to be very three weeks or so.
@@petebeard If a person subscribes you'll show up in their subscription feed, people get notifications if they click the bell icon which I immediately did after subscribing :)
This is really cool. My "MAD" era was the mid-70's until the mid-eighties when I sadly "grew up". Such great memories, not only of the magazines, but of those quiet toilet moments shared with the signet books. MAD was fundamental to my upbringing. It's sad, to me, that kids today won't have warm memories like that, opting for cold meme-ories.
I can't imagine being that talented at ANYTHING, it's just mind boggling. 16 years ago when I was driving truck the owner of the company bought a bunch of new trucks and of course had his all decked out with a bunch of fancy pinstriping, the kind that gets hand painted by some guy with a brush with all the fancy scroll work around the door handles and where the mirror's bolt to the door. I went to the main garage to pick up my paycheck the day the guy was there doing it, I looked at one side of the truck then walked over to the other and without using some kind of patterns or stencils they were absolutely perfect mirror images of each other, I got to talking to the guy doing it and ask him "Did you go to some kind of school or something to learn how to do this or are you one of those people who can just do it?" He replied "Nope, I can just do it." To which I replied "I hate you".
I ripped off MAD for school assignments, out right plagiarism. It inspired me to pursue art and writing and though I never amounted to anything I cherish it.
My favorite writer, Ray Bradbury, subscribed to MAD magazine for decades. I loved it for many years. My favorite artists were Sergio Aragones and....Mort Drucker. Mr Drucker was one of the purely greatest caricaturists I've ever seen....maybe the best of all time, far as I'm concerned. All I had to do was open to the page of one of the satires he'd illustrated, and I'd be helpless with laughter. He was a master of facial expressions, and knew how to exaggerate a character's features and personality in an almost subtle but remarkable way to make them incredibly funny. I always loved Sergio Aragones' lovely, chaotic little people. They were always fun and fascinating to study...so much was always going on with them! I miss the good old MAD Magazine. It was eventually ruined, and then died. But it had a good long run. I have classic MAD in my laptop, stored from their set of discs, to enjoy as I like. I'll never give it up. I must say I was startled to see you put up a video about it! Thank you, sir, for another wonderful video.
And yet another grand one! I read my first MAD Magazine in September, 1958! (Good memories, AND family "historians!") I was 11 years old, and I became addicted to MAD up to the late 70s.
Hello again and thanks for the recent comments. Mad had an immense impact on me as I grew up but sadly not enough of their talent rubbed off despite my obsession - especially Jack davis.
i haven't read mad magazine in decades. but i always appreciated it and admired it. i'm surprised to here just how long its lasted. it was the internet that killed the magazine publishing industry. mad magazine's "son of mad" paperback made an appearance in the beatles' fo;m "a hard day's night." we kids always loved the part of the mag that replaced the lyrics to popular songs at the time. (it would always say "sing to the tune of...). i still have a very STRONG memory of mad's satire of the film "the french connection." it was a laugh riot. also, in the 1969 in review issue they included a panel of a drawing of the beatles with the caption "the beatles dropped hints that paul was dead as nails and rocketed therir record sales." what great memories from america's MOST iconic satirical figure - alfred e. neuman. thanks for the video.
All of the artists were great but Drucker's work was sometimes beyond awesome. Of course, I loved Elder and his bizarre gags that had little to do with what was really going on. In grade school, I did a Paul Bunyan comic adopting his knack for gags. This was hugely popular, was passed around the classes and soon everyone wanted me to draw other comics.
Hello and I tend to agree with you about Frucker. What a remarkably skilful draughtsman and caricaturist he was. But purely for the humour it was always Don Martin for me.
@@petebeard ... spoonerism, malapropism or just plain typo? * 😏 (Useless info: For detention as a freshman in High School we had to go thru thousands upons thousands of school textbooks and write over any written *F* with a *B* and *u* and *c* with an *o* . Still occasionally mutter 'Book you' to annoying people.) * j.i.c. er, Mort Booker above
@@him_animations Hi again, and thanks for letting me know. It was due to interference by RU-vid as I'd stated it was safe for kids. Now corrected so I hope I don't live to regret it.
Hi there. So far I think yours is the only comment from a younger viewer. Look after those magazines the best you can. I stored mine in the loft and they grew mould. Still got the paperbacks though.
Unbelievable cluster of talent on those early comics. I discovered them as a pre-teen in the late seventies, first from The World Encyclopaedia of Comics, then book reprints, and I just loved them so much. I know Davis and Wood were the stars, but Elder's more modest style was probably my favourite. He's like Magritte: he knew that if you play it straight, it ends up even funnier and weirder.
Hello and thanks a lot for your comment about this video. In the UK we never had the comic so I only remember the mags and aperback editions first hand. It was all life -changing for me and my mates.
@@petebeard Art Spiegelman, author of Maus, nicely depicted the life-changing quality in an autobiographical comic. He shows himself as a child transfixed in a shop by the famous Basil Wolverton cover for Mad #1. He's saying to his mother 'But I _need_ it.' I really related to that. Really, I can't help thinking the American underground comix scene, of which Spiegelman was originally a part, probably wouldn't have happened at all without Mad and the EC horror and sci-fi titles.
@@JohnMoseley Hello again, and I thought you might be interested in watching the video 'unsung heroes of illustration 68' as it features the weird work of Mr. Wolverton. I left himout of the Mad video in the end as his appearances were too few and far between.
I wish I never got rid of all my old Mad Magazines. I have the Happiest memories reading them, finding them in Thrift shops on school holidays was such a score. I miss that excitement
Hello and my sympathies. My collection of mags from the late 60s and 70s fell apart. But I still have the paperback reprints such as Son of mad and they are treasured items.
Respect to fans of any of these artists! There is a special place in my heart for the early (especially the comic book) issues...Harvey Kurtzman was an absolute genius who made the concept sing. He laid the foundation for others to successfully continue MAD after he left.
I grew up with Mad and tried getting away with one of there poems for my homework at school on insomnia[1964].Also had to find out what Pizza pie was about as there where always cartoons showing the rubbery stretchy things that we didnt have in this country or I had never seen. .I even went to the local library to look one up to make myself..Always thought it is over rated.Nice one Pete....
Thanks Pete, for the memories. In the early sixties we used to pass around copies of Mad in junior high school. I can remember on one occasion being lumbered by the geography teacher, reading Mad instead of listening intently to his boring monologue on the wonders of world cereal production... 🤣
Mr. Beard, I don't have the words to properly thank you for a spectacular behind-the-scenes video! I remember seeing my first copy of Mad at a drugstore (complete with a burger and ice cream counter) where my grandmother worked. Priceless memories that I will cherish forever... Many, many thanks....
Hello and many thanks for your appreciation of the channel. I've been pleasantly surprised by the number of similar comments and it seems there are countless numbers of us for whom Mad was a significant factor in our lives.
I remember most of these artists as well! I so wanted to be Mort Drucker. Since I was pretty good at drawing portraits, I tried really hard to figure out how to distill them into caricatures, but, though for a while I did get fairly good at capturing features with limited lines, I never could learn how to exaggerate and make them amusing. I was totally in awe of his, and many of the other MAD artists' abilities!
Hello and many thabks for your comment. I also wanted desperately to be Mort Drucker (or Jack Davis). I failed miserably at both and had to recognise that some of us have to make the most of whatever talent we were given.
Remember back then there were advertisements on matchbook covers for 'auditions' to be accepted into art schools (if you were good enough, ha ha) and you had to submit your drawing of the image on the matchbook (either a lumberjack, or a dog or horse or whatever)... In one issue of the magazine the editor of Mad had his artists submit their renditions, I think it was a donkey, and I (as a kid) was floored at their creativity. As a kid, I assumed that the 'goal' was to mimic the image _exactly_ , but the Mad magazine artists "knocked the assignment out of the park".... I remember one of the artists drew the "donkey head" as an assemblage of flat pieces of thin strips of wood loosely and carelessly nailed into the rough shape of a donkeys head... That edition opened my mind up.....
Mort Drucker…his rendition of The Way We were still cracks me up. And my sister and I still laugh over Don Martin’s sound effect of Wonder Woman taking her bra off. 😂😂😂
Watching this, I now see just how much Mad shaped both my sense of humor and my politics. That fold with Uncle Sam picking the pocket for war was quite on point. Thanks.
If you're in the field of any kind of communications, visual or otherwise, Mad Magazine and it's history are an essential study. Very enjoyable vid Pete. Thank you!
Thank you for tating the time & effort to get this 'lil gem out, and share those previously unknown bits of history 'bout how Mad came about and who were responsable for putting it all together 🤗
Hi Pete.... a well done video. I grew up with MAD magazine and enjoyed it immensely. I think Mort was my favorite artist in the whole lot. I heard about the magazine coming to an end... sad to see, but maybe someone will start another similar magazine again... You can't keep a good artist down. Thank you again for a well done video, one of my favorites to date.
Hi John and thanks for yet another positive response. I secretly wished I was Mort Drucker but knew I didn't have the skills to even get close. Those film parodies were great.
@@petebeard The thanks are from me to you! You did a really fine job. Great work, sir! I regularly bought MAD right up to the end. An American institution and greatly missed by many. -Matt
One of my memories of Mad was a strip in which they claimed they used link sausages as a stand-in for dog poop. I was unable to eat link sausages for years after that.
Hello and I'm glad you enjoyed it. My own collection of magazines disintegrated eventually but I still have a collection of the paperback sized compendiums, which are just about holding up - a bit like me.
Great video. Thank you for putting this together. I was an avid reader as a kid growing up in the early 70s and delved into back issues from the '60s. Pretty amazing gang of artists and writers!
Hello and thanks for watching and your appreciation of the video. To this day I remain in awe of the talents of Mort Drucker and Jack Davis in particular.
My father, to my great surprise, started buying MAD in the early 70's. It was the English edition and it was only available in a kiosk, at the central station in Stockholm. I just loved that magazine and kept buying it when my father got too old. A Swedish version also came out, which was almost even crazier than the English one. My copies are in storage, so I've been thinking about re-reading everything for a long time.
Hello and thanks for your comment. You are the second Swedish person to comment, and I had no idea it was published anywhere other than the USA and belatedly in Britain. My collection fell to bits but I have some paperbacks still.
Thanks, Pete! Great Segment on one of the last of the 20th century classic journo-comics! Like all those who grew up begging, borrowing, stealing and reading it over and over again, there's a tinge of sadness on the end on the parody era. In print form, that is. Atleast I prowl around second hand book shops, sniffing out old issues, in whatever state it is in, and buy it for my collection. Nowadays, there is the social media to Troll, Satirize, Parody, where everybody is a self proclaimed 'artist'...
Hello again and many thanks for your appreciation of the video. Mad was profoundly influential on me and I just wish more of the talent of jack Davis and Mort Drucker in particular would have rubbed off on me.
Great. Thanks. I grew up with MAD, it was a big day when the next issue came out! I used to pester the guy in the corner store all the time. Such amazing artistic and writing talent for a pocket-money price.
Terrific doc! I'm old enough and lucky enough to have had a pile of the first Mad COMICS which I treasured...until I was evicted from my college off-campus apartment, and my landlady kept my comics in lieu of late rent... RIP MAD!
Hello and thanks for the comment - and the tragic story. And thanks for not shiding me for getting it weong about the Kurtzman issues being in black and white. I just assumed it had been because all the images I found online were not in colour.
Great Video, thank you. I held on to some Mad Paperbacks longer than many other items. I confess that I also enjoyed the well drawn soft Porn of Mad but most everything within was worth reading!
The first MAD that I ever read was in 1963 when I was 10 years old and it had two of the stories featured here, Starchie, and Flesh Garden. I thought it was one of the funniest things I'd ever read and remained an avid fan well into my late teens.
The first MAD that I ever read was in 1963 when I was 10 years old and it had two of the stories featured here, Starchie, and Flesh Garden. I thought it was one of the funniest things I'd ever read and remained an avid fan well into my late teens.
@@jeffcarlson3269I found some used recently at a comic book store, but they were from the 70's. Back then, the first issues I got were from a friend and I was hooked after that. lol
@@oldschoolsinger what I was wondering was if you find the 1953 color copies of these stories .somewhere....?.. or did you JUST find the later repeats...as you mentioned from the 70's?...
@@jeffcarlson3269 No Jeff. I was just referring to regular black and white issues from the early 70's. I found them at a comic book store. The color issues hadn't started coming out yet. Here's Wikipedia: In issue No. 403 of March 2001, the magazine broke its long-standing taboo and began running paid advertising. The outside revenue allowed the introduction of color printing.
@@oldschoolsinger oh.....Yes MAD had such a long issue run from the first series... but I guess as the years progress... some of even those later issues.. will be getting more and more difficult to find in used book stores... I am happy you were able to find the ones you did...if you ever wish to buy some MADS and can no longer find any at the used shops you browse.... there is always Ebay.. . sometimes people sell a batch very cheaply there... I do a lot of shopping on Ebay myself.... that is how I was able to get the MAD comics from the early 50's...
MAD’s Cradle To Grave Primer is one of the best books ever written! Grew up reading a lot of MAD and it has certainly shaped a lot in the way that I perceive the world today. Still have 64 odd digests (always asking for more at old bookshops) stored away safely to read again and again.
An interesting note as to how popular Mad was is that 73 Magazine had featured 'Alfred E. Newham WN7ECCH" on their front cover of one of their issues. I about lost it when I saw that cover.
Hello and thanks a lot for your comment. Although as a Brit the reference is rather lost on me. It was the same back when I first started reading them and some of the content escaped me. Good lord, I didn't know what a Pizza was back then.
Hello again and I'm glad you enjoyed it. My magazine collection fell apart eventually but I've still got my paperbook editions. Some of the greatest comic work ever I think.
Hello and thanks for the appreciation. I still have my collection of Mad paperback compilations. Like me they've seen better days but they are still a source of entertainment.
Thanks Pete, fond memories of guilty pleasures. For some reason 'Mad' was strictly banned in my home and could only be viewed in friends' basements. When my private stash was discovered, I was severely admonished by my mom. Not sure why, possibly the Legion of Decency, but Mad wasn't all that rude and when my 'Playboy' stash was discovered in the attic several years later, my parents seemed relieved to learn I wasn't gay. Maybe it was Spy vs Spy or the movie reviews or something else even more subversive. One wonders what Mad would have made of the current Disney film culture, but fortunately there is 'The Critical Drinker'.
Hello again and thanks for your comment and story of illicit collections. My own parents never bothered me about Mad or other reading materials I'm glad to say. But it was probably just as well I'd left home by the time I was reading Zap Comix.
@@davewalter1216 my parents never saw my copy.... he was a hoot... in the MAD.. style... but way too raunchy for MAD to produce....didn't Gilbert Sheldon draw the Warthog?... one of them undergrounders....
Will never forget the 1967, "Scenes we'd like to see." Had to guys sitting on 2 barstools each, one cheek on each, and the caption said, "Pillsbury says it best!". I was paralyzed from the neck down, and my grandmother brought it in and turned it page by page for me. I laughed so hard, that the muscles contracted in my stomach, and I raised my head up an inch off the bed. Wish I still had a copy ... Feb or March if I remember right
I have five of the paperbacks, It's a world Mad, Captain Klutz, In Verse, In Orbit, Son of. I have a few vintage copies of the magazine as well. They made me laugh a lot when I was a kid. It was so odd and funny, I especially liked the advertisements for 'fake' barbeques and things like that. 😄
enjoyed that. I was mad about Mort Drucker and his film parodies when I was a kid. He kind of influenced me but kind of not because I knew I'd never be that good
