mad magazine

The Lighter Side of Concrete.

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Look, it’s been a long time since we’ve had a Concrete comic, I don’t need to tell you that. There were some short stories that popped up in the 2011 series of Dark Horse Presents that were collected into the Three Uneasy Pieces one-shot in 2012, which was the last time a comic called Concrete was on the stands.

Prior to that, the last long-form Concrete story was The Human Dilemma, a six-issue run in 2004-5. Which, by the way, ended on a…cliffhanger? Unresolved plot line? Not sure what to call it, but I’ve been waiting over twenty years to see some forward progress on that particular bit of business, which, I’m glad to say, you do see at least a tiny bit of in this story. This isn’t quite on the level as where we were left off with Miracleman #24 back in ’93, keeping us waiting ’til the new stories started up in 2022…especially given that Miracleman as a whole is likely to remain unresolved forever. Well…let’s just consider ourselves lucky Paul Chadwick is around and able to continue his comic.

Despite the 21-year-gap, Chadwick just picks things up right from where they left off, which…actually, works a lot better than you’d think, thanks to the general nature of Concrete stories. There’s not a lot of story-to-story, mini-to-mini continuity that one has to keep track of. Primarily all you need to know is that Concrete was once a dude named Ron whose brain was transplanted into some kind of biomechanical body by aliens, and now uses that body to travel the world and do interesting things, accompanied by an assistant and a doctor who monitors his condition.

This new mini, Stars Over Sand, at least in this first issue, does lean pretty hard on events from previous decades-old stories. Well, “lean pretty hard” in relative terms, because there’s nothing here that isn’t explained or at least can’t be figured out from context. It’s just a little strange to have carry-overs from previous stories like that.

To enter [SPOILER] territory, the big “cliffhanger” I was sort of talking around earlier in this post was Concrete’s “baby,” a miniature version of himself that more-or-less budded off his body in that Human Dilemma story. That’s probably the biggest change to the Concrete “formula,” in as much the series has one, in that we now have an apparently-inert but still alive child version of Concrete the cast has to concern themselves with, along with whatever new shenanigans Concrete himself is up to.

What’s particularly interesting is the character development of the doctor, Maureen, that we’ve seen along the course of Concrete‘s existence. Inspired by the arrival of this new series, I’ve pulled out my original run of the Dark Horse Presents anthology series to reread the earliest short stories, and very early on Maureen’s interest in Concrete is almost solely scientific. It was a characterization that carried through for years, at least to my memory, before taking a sudden, more…intimate turn in Human Dilemma, seemingly resulting in Baby Concrete’s creation. There is a short sequence in this new issue where Maureen goes from commenting on the child’s current inert status to actually cradling the child, with concern and care in her face. It’s a more motherly turn that would have been hard to imagine earlier in the Concrete timeline, but given she could very well be considered one of the baby’s “parents,” it’s an understandable development.

Okay, despite all that other stuff, it’s still a Concrete story, with Concrete’s own musings on the world, the environment, and his place in it, and it’s all as expertly done as you would expect from Chadwick. The art is beautiful, the writing is sensitive, bereft of melodrama even given the occasional melodramatic moments, and overall it is an engrossing and relaxing experience. There’s really no other comic quite like it. I understand “cozy” is a term now thrown around to describe certain types of entertainment experiences. I’d imagine one could call this comic “cozy” — it gives you want you want and what you need, while still gently surprising you.

It appears Chadwick is lettering the comic himself, as I’m assuming longtime letterer Bill Spicer has retired in the meantime. (I used to see Mr. Spicer on a regular basis at my old job…loved chatting about old comics and ‘zines with him, since he’s an ol’ ‘zine editor himself!) Alas, there is a typo on the very first page of the story, but let’s just say the character speaking just stumbled over his words a bit. I mean, whomst amongst us…? And anyway, who am I to talk about typoos. Um, I mean, typos.

One more thing that kinda/sorta threw me off slightly was dialoge references to the internet and YouTube…I mean, yes, the internet obviously existed when that last mini came out, but the series existed for so many years prior to wide use of cell phones and social media and all that. It was like when Carl Barks wrote one last Duck story and one of the nephews referenced a fax machine. Okay, yes, this tech existed in one form or another since the 1800s, but this was clearly a reference to modern tech that felt very strange to see in the eternally mid-century Duck stories. I don’t get the sense that Concrete stories are in “real” time, so if we have a sliding timeline at work here, then surely Ron had his cell phone out taking pictures of those weird lights he saw on that long-ago hike where he first encountered those aliens. (I haven’t reread the origin or its revised version in a while, so maybe he did take pics, I don’t remember.)

Anyway, I am more than pleased that Concrete is back. It’s a longtime favorite — 40 years longtime, in fact — and I hope it sells a bazillion copies so that Mr. Chadwick will be inspired to cut the gap down between series to something less than 21 years.

• • •

Oh, hey, MAD Magazine #600 is out, and it has a swell new wraparound cover by Serio Aragonés (click to MAD-size):


A few years back, there was a run of media stories about the “end” of MAD and how it would be no more, and to this day I have people coming into the shop commenting on the fact that this American institution had been cancelled. “Nope,” I would say, and whip out the latest copy from the shelf, much to their shock.

In fact, the mag just relaunched with a new #1, only available through comic shops, and went mostly reprint. As time went on, the new content slowly increased, and for the Special #600 (“Big Deal!” as MAD has said about previous milestones) it is almost all new stuff! Classic material from some of the artists most associated with the magazine, like Al Jaffee and Jack Davis, is included, because it wouldn’t feel right to leave them out.

And reverting it to the original numbering is very welcome. MAD isn’t a thing to be Rebooted with an All-New Beginning! It’s a continuing observer of our times, and having that numerical link back to its history gives it, in a way, a little more weight and validity than it had as what almost felt like a special “Classics” side-series replacing the original.

I know print satire and lampooning like this isn’t “hep” and “groovy” with the kids like it used to be, and that to an extent MAD exists as a nostalgic artifact for adult readers. And I’m sorry that’s the case, given I’ve written before about how, amongst the jokes and silliness there was a real education about seeing through the veneer of advertising, cutting through the babble of politicians, and basically learning to recognize bullshit when you see it. Frankly, that’s needed now more than ever.

There are lots of jokes about MAD itself in this issue, which, sure, they’ve earning it. Sergio contributes “A MAD Look at MAD” which is exactly what you hope it would be. There’s a reference to the infamous “middle finger” issue which I love. There’s a solid Dave Berg gag…not a gag by Dave Berg, but a gag about Dave Berg. Jaffee’s in here with a great “Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions” article. And there’s plenty more fun stuff in here, too. If you haven’t looked at MAD in a while, this would be a good one to check out.

I hope MAD is around for another 600 issues. I hope it’s around for another 6,000 issues. Goodness knows it’s not like the world is going to run out of things it can use for subject matter.

“BRLSFFSP!”

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Hi pals! Happy New Year, and here’s a reminder that I’m still looking for your predictions for the 2026 comics industry, so get ’em in while you can! I’m going to start looking at the 2025 predictions from last year in a week or two, so consider yourself forewarned.

In a brief follow-up to pal Kurt‘s mention of the MAD Magazine Game in the comments to Monday’s post…yes, I had that game!


According to the Wikipedia article Kurt linked, the game was originally released in 1979, and eventually rereleased as the MAD Magazine What Me Worry? Game. But I definitely had the first version, pictured above. And I keep saying “had” when I’m pretty sure it’s still in a bod with the rest of my boardgames (including this classic) in my parents’ garage.

The object of the game was, unlike certain other games of note, to be the first player to lose all of your money. Lots of MAD art illustrates the board and cards, and the money features, of course, the face of Alfred E. Neuman. I mean, let’s go for another link to BoardGameGeek so you can check this out yourself. One gag I liked from the game was a specific denomination of bill that was ridiculously high and unused in the game, and thanks to the BoardGameGeek link, I can tell you that bill is $1,329,063.

It was a fun and silly game, and I don’t think I’ve played it since childhood. One of these days I need to search out that box of games in that garage and recover the darn things. At the very least I’d like to play Sinking of the Titanic again.

And for the sake of completeness I should note that there was also a MAD card game (which I also have, and I think it’s here in my house, actually), and a Spy Vs. Spy game, which I did not know about.

As far as I know there was never a Magic: The Gathering style collectible card game for MAD, or even just a MAD expansion for Magic itself, which I feel is really missing a bet. Or how ’bout a game just built around Don Martin’s sound effects? Does a “FRUGGA DUGGA DUGGA DUGGA” beat out a “STROINGGOINNK?” Only one way to find out, and that’s a COMPREHENSIVE RULE SET. KRUGAZUNCH!

Yes, I know they’re still doing new Beavis and Butthead.

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So I’ve been a MAD Magazine fan for a long time…since my uncle gave me a bag of his old, mostly coverless copies, dating from the early ’70s, and when I started getting them new off the stands with the January ’76 issue.

I was All In (® DC Comics) on MAD for quite a while, buying the mag, the specials, the paperbacks (actually mail-ordering directly from MAD itself books I couldn’t find locally). Eventually I stopped in the early ’80s, first dropping the specials once they started reprinting material I already read, then sorta falling out of the habit of getting the main series. I still had fond feelings for it, and I’d poke through an issue on occasion after that…but my MAD collection went to the wayside.

I would still dip in and out over the years, especially appreciating that series of specials where they reprint, complete and in order, all of the original comic book sized MADs (as opposed to the comic book inserts in the specials from the ’70s).

I mean, if I really wanted to get back into the MAD game, I do buy and sell old (and new!) copies at my shop, but I try hard to not get high off my own supply and leave ’em for the customers. But, of late, my grocery store occasional racks on their increasingly shrinking magazine displays themed MAD reprint volumes (not available through my comic distributors) filled with classic material. And just this week, I picked up the newest one, MAD: The Best of the Worst.


And flipping through it, I saw some familiar strips I no longer had in my possession, like “Star Blecch” and the infamous “43-Man Squamish.” But I also saw the All in the Family parody, “Gall in the Family Fare,” which really surprised me, given on how it leans pretty hard on the use of various slurs for particular groups. In particular, it used a specific term aimed at gay folks:


…that, if you may recall, I discussed the usage of the shortened version of this term in a previous MAD reprint book, and the editing thereof.

In the case of the Star Wars parody there, the term was (possibly) used as a comment on the perception of C3P0’s effeminacy. And given that one of the writers of that parody is, in fact, gay himself, there may have been a little joshing of his own community as well. Not so much punching down as punching sideways. Regardless, as I noted in that past post, just dropping said term as a punchline is not something that would likely be seen as acceptable now, necessitating the change.

But in this latest reprint of “Gall in the Family Fare,” that term, and many others, are just laid out there. In context, it’s understandable, as MAD is commenting on the show’s, and by extension television in general, use of shock value for attention. Personally, I don’t think that’s what All in the Family did, but MAD‘s not here for reasoned debate, it’s here to make jokes and satirize culture. And, like the show itself, the parody makes it clear that Archie Bunker’s (or rather, Starchie Bunkerhill’s) behavior is reprehensible. Especially once you get to the punchline.

Thus, editing the jokes in this parody (like I did in that scan I made above) would undermine the eventual point. But I can certainly see someone pulling this off the shelf, flipping to this parody, and just seeing The Words and being shocked, context be damned. By and large we associate casual racism and bigotry like this with Bad People, regardless of purpose, and just throwing them out there in jokes may be too much for some nowadays. If anyone notices at all.

Which leads me to the next question here, which was brought up to me when I broached this subject on Bluesky: who is this for?

Well, the simple answer is “me,” I want a periodic dose of selected pieces from MAD offered to me in a semi-sturdy format from which I may enjoy some nostalgic pleasure. For its occasional faults, MAD was a gathering of several fine cartoonists at the peak of their game. The writing did a good job teaching kids the important lessons that advertisers lie to you, movies and TV shows think you’re dumb, and the world as a whole is filled with stupid things humans just gotta deal with. I like being reminded that there once was someone out there looking out for us.

So, it’s there for nostalgic adults, sure. But are kids buying this? It would be easy to say “no,” but remember when I said my shop carried old MADs? I sell a lot of them to kids. Kids I’m not sure were old enough to buy and read the magazines when last the all-new issues were still coming out. I’m not sure what they’d get out of an All in the Family parody, unless they’re heavy watchers of the reruns. I’m not even sure if they’d appreciate the Beavis and Butthead joke in here, or if that’s too archaic a reference. (But there is an article about “Unconscious Racists” to balance the “Gall in the Family Fare” story.)

But there are still kids out there who want MAD. Who buy the 1970s issues and wonder about the Watergate and hippie jokes, much like I did when I got my copies when I was about six years old. And you know, I read all those and aside from owning a comic shop and writing a comic book blog, I turned out okay. So those kids new to reading MAD will be too.. Maybe one of them will be responsible for someday returning MAD to its eventual glory.

Well, if you read all that, here’s a video adapted from the “Gall in the Family Fare” flexidisc MAD produced. …Um, don’t listen to this in public. (NOTE: they call Edith “Meathead” in the comic, but change it in the recording.)

If no other name exists, may I suggest “Chasley L. Wilcoxian.”

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So in a collection obtained on Thursday, I found one of the many MAD-a-likes that had been published over the years, hoping to ride the coattails of that famous magazine’s success. And it was in fact one I’d never heard of, through, I’d bet one American dollar, whatever that’s worth now, that I probably spotted a copy in one my visits to various newsstands in the early ’80s.

That mag is Wacko:


“Okay, so it’s wacko, what’s the name?” Pipe down back there, smart-aleck. Wacko was a very short-lived example of this genre of rip-off, lasting only three issues and maybe into 1981, I’m not sure.

The interiors are…MAD-esque, with a lead TV parody that’s illustrated very much in the Mort Drucker/Angelo Torres style. And there’s even Wacko‘s own version of MAD‘s “Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions,” or Cracked‘s “Shut Ups,” or even, as I was reminded of on Bluesky, Trash‘s “Trash Can-Its” — the very “hello fellow kids” article entitled “Wisecrack Responses Young People Come Up With.”


However, let’s get back to that cover. The large fella we see front and center there appears to be the mascot of the mag, though I can’t seem to track down a name for him. There’s even a Reddit thread, or at least an attempt at one, trying to find out his name, but three years on there have been no responses.

But there on the cover you can see the gentleman stomping on the mascots of other humor mags. From left to right, there’s The Nebbish from Marvel’s Crazy, that Alfred fella from whatever that mag was, Sylvester P. Smythe from Cracked, and then that last one took me a second.

Well, just a second, as I was showing this to a customer and he asked who that was. My immediate guess was that he from from Sick, another MAD knockoff that was a comic book originally, then run as a black and white mag in the late ’70s. It in fact ended its run right around the time Wacko started. Anyway, here’s a pic of Sick‘s fella in his natural environment:


The name of Sick‘s mascot was “Huckleberry Fink,” though the late ’70s seemed to be a little past the sell-date for “fink” as an automatically funny word (Johnny Hart’s comic strips notwithstanding).

But there we go, Wacko, one of the last gasps of that particular genre of humor mag…I mean, sure, Crazy and Cracked continued on for some time, but how many new MAD knockoffs were launched after that? Feels like the ’70s were kind of the final heyday for those sorts of publishing endeavors.

Just mentally add the word “Cheap!” after every cover price mention.

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So one of these came into the shop the other day via a collection someone was trying to sell, and I passed on it:


…mostly because it was a little too beat up, and also didn’t include the flexidisc. But it did bring back some memories.

It was 1980, and was 10 or 11 years old, depending on far into 1980 we were. I spotted a new MAD special on the stands, but it wasn’t one of the usual MAD Super Specials, but some new, standalone thing. It was MAD Disco, making fun of the musical fad of the times.

When I picked it up, the first thing I noticed was just how thin it felt. It had kind of a stiff paper cover, a little higher quality than your usual MAD, but otherwise felt like a slim pamphlet compared to the other members of the MAD family.

But what I remember that especially shocked me was the price. This thinner MAD was a whole two dollars. Yes, the magazine did contain a flexidisc, which I presumed then was the primary impetus for the higher cost.

It was still a new MAD thing, and given this was 1980, and I was still in my prime MAD readership phase (starting about ’76, ending about ’82), I somehow either scraped together the money, or bugged one of parents to buy it, and I took it home.

And I enjoyed the mag, and the record, quite a bit. The record was quite the elaborate enterprise, with full silly disco arrangements for funny songs, and you could kinda see why MAD needed that full $2 for their publication. As for the comics, I think the coin-operated disco gag drawn by Sergio Aragones amused my friends and I the most.

Alas, all these years later, that MAD, along with many other childhood magazines, were disposed of during a spring cleaning. I had hoped the disco flexidisc survived the purge by being kept with my record collection, but I have not yet found it. (In fact, I just now checked again, and nope, still not there, but I do still have my original “Pac-Man Fever” single, received when we preordered “Pac-Man” for the Atari 2600, and my “Young Fresh Fellows Vs. Scruffy the Cat” split 7 inch.)

But, regarding the mag’s apparenbt thinness: checking the Grand Comics Database, the page count is given as 36 pages, including covers presumably. And remember, this was for $2, including the record.

I thought I’d compare it to other MADs from the period, like this standard monthly issue here, #215:


…containing my all-time favorite title for a MAD movie parody, “A Crock O’ [Blip] Now!” Anyhow, this page count is given as 52 pages, with a cover price of $0.75. No inserts, no nuttin’, but color covers and black and white interiors.

Also from 1980 is MAD Super Special #30:

…which is 100 pages for $1.25. Extra sized yes, special inserts no.

More of a point of comparison is the next special, #31:


…which also contains a record, albeit a one-sided dsic versus the two-sided disco record. 84 pages, all reprints, for $1.50.

And the next couple of specials follow sort of the same pattern…if there’s an insert, the page count drops a little and the price stays at $1.50. If there is no insert, you get more pages for $1.50. Then in ’81 you get the special that includes a giant fold-out U.S. map with illustrations by Aragones, and that’s 80-something pages for $2.

But looking back, I was right to be surprised at the higher price point on that MAD Disco mag. It is significantly higher than the other available MAD publications, though looking back at it now I can see why.

The mag was all new material, and the production costs on a double-sided flexidisc was certainly much higher than the standard one-sider. Plus, there was the actual production of the songs themselves…they had to be written, they had to be performed, produced, mixed, other terms I’m not quite sure about.

To the best of my knowledge there wasn’t a full rerelease of all these songs on CD, but three of them can be found on MAD Grooves, a CD released in the mid-1990s. In fact, there are a lot of MAD albums that could stand some kind of new release…maybe not on CD, which would be my preference, but digital at least. Well, maybe the All in the Family parody may be a bit rough on today’s ears, but there’s a lot of funny stuff just languishing, out of print.

Though…shhhh, don’t tell anyone, but you might something of interest at this link. (Warning: may autoplay on you.)

What, him worry?

filed under Categories idiots, mad magazine, video games 16 Comments

So a few decades back, I started to participate in the local computer bulletin board (or BBS) scene. This is what we had before general qccess to the internet, and an alternative to larger commercial enterprises like Prodigy, Compuserve, and AOL. Hobbyists would set up BBS software on their own computers, and with a dedicated phone line or two to allow users to dial in with their own computers and modems to participate in message boards, play games, download the “warez,” what have you.

It was a fun activity and a creative outlet, and on at least one of these BBSes I ran a dedicated section for comics discussion. This was very early in my comics retail career (or “career”) and several folks on these BBSes were, in fact, customers of mine. It was usually a fun, friendly endeavor and I’m still friends with a number of people from then to this day.

And I say “usually” because there was this one guy — isn’t there always — who was a real fly in the ointment. Going by the appropriate name of “Bozo” (appropriate not in the Larry Harmon way, but in the more derogatory sense), this person would rant and cajole and insult with misspelled screeds and usually unwarranted venom. Hostile and homophobic, it was a wonder to me why he spent his time doing this in paces where folks were just trying to have a little fun and relax. (It was also a wonder to me, in retrospect, why he wasn’t immediately kicked off these BBSes…perhaps he was from some, but he certainly seemed to be around a lot.) I tangled with him once or twice, and quickly realized both the futility of this and that this was exactly what he wanted, so I stopped.

This outsized toxic personality had me wondering…just who was this guy? And it wasn’t like today, where some jerk can pop up out of nowhere and he’s, like, on the other side of the world from you. This was probably someone at least relatively nearby, calling into the boards to wreak his havoc. I pictured some cranky dude in his 40s (I was in my 20s at the time) in his stained t-shirt banging at his keyboard surrounded by empty cans of whatever his poison of choice may have been, smoker’s-cough laughing at his latest bon mots.

One thing about these being local BBSes is that there would occasionally be in-person gatherings, at a park or bowling alley or places like that, where we meet face-to-face instead of just typing words at each other. And it was at one of these gatherings that “Bozo” turned up.

And what surprised me was that…he was about my age, possibly younger. A handsome guy, appeared to be completely congenial in person, even perhaps a little sheepish to stand revealed as “that guy.” Though I was a relative newcomer to the BBS scene compared to many of the others at these gatherings, and they seemed to be familiar if not friendly with the fella. As if it were necessary to have a “troll” on the BBSes and this was they guy who happened to take up the job, and, y’know, no hard feelings.

I never did get any actual insight into what “Bozo” thought he was doing, whether this was some form of extended performance art or if he actually bought into all the madness he was spouting. Anyway, it didn’t matter because by the mid-late-ish ’90s the local BBS scene had largely collapsed, as the internet began to expand access and lured users away. And “Bozo” because an artifact of the past, a weird memory from a mostly positive pastime.

But then I was on the internet, where there were plenty more “Bozos” to be had.

I was not a Usenet guy, the message exchange system that primarily dominated early internet usage before the advent of the World Wide Web, but yes, I know trolling was a problem there too. And of course there were all the dedicated message boards on the Web, with their own problematic trolls, but I mostly avoided those as well. But I didn’t really peronally encounter trolling again until blogs began to really be a thing. Especially after I started my own blog.

To be fair, I haven’t had to deal with many over the couple of decades of doing this site. There are the occasional drive-by commenters, who only turn up once to say something insulting to me because they disagreed with whatever. I had a couple of recurring trolls (one of which followed me over from the old Fanboy Rampage blog) who would shout nonsense in my comments sections ’til they tired of it, or I blocked them. I still have one dude who pops up whenever I suggest that maybe people who aren’t white and straight should be treated as humans, to tell me the error of my ways.

But “jerks is jerks,” I guess, and running a site that allows public commenting is alas opening a door for people to do this sort of thing, and that’s just the price paid.

And, hoo boy, there’s social media of course, which is just a madhouse filled with confirmed social deviants just itching to pile abuse onto someone who made the mistake of being, say, a woman. Little different from “Bozo,” they just cast out their hooks and see who they can catch.

A slight variation I’ve encountered more recently on the usual trolling is “the super fan,” someone who is extremely possessive of their specific obsession. So much so, that someone else discussing that obsession in a way they don’t personally approve of is to be attacked and diminished in favor of their superior perspective.

One example that continually amuses me is when blogging brother Andrew and I were on Xwitter discussing (WARNING: old people video game references incoming) Coleco’s game releases for the Atari 2600. We’d referenced the fact that many of these games were ports from the more advanced Colecovision, and by pure necessity had to be downgraded to be able to perform on the 2600’s older hardware.

We weren’t denigrating Coleco for this, we weren’t cast aspersions on the people who made these games…we were simply acknowledging the literally undeniable fact that the 2600 games had to less complex than their Colecovision counterparts. The hardware and memory differences demanded it.

Well, well, well, the world’s #1 Colecovision fan somehow found our discussion and injected himself right in there, outraged that we would call these games incompetent trash (we didn’t) and that we’d insult the programmers’ knowhow (we also didn’t). The point of object seemed to be the word “downgraded,” which we meant entirely dispassionately and he thought was an offense of the highest order.

Andrew just blocked the guy right away, which was the wise move, though I think it was my years in retail that made me attempt to reason with the guy and get him to see what we were saying. Because I’m talking about it here, you can probably guess that didn’t work out, even to the point where the guy actually tried to tattle on us to some old former Coleco programmer who also happened to be on Xwitter. (I never saw that programmer make a comment, presumably because he probably rolled his eyes and thought “ugh, this guy again.”)

Since I’ve abandoned Xwitter and moved to Bluesky, I haven’t had to deal with too many problem people, and those that turn up are very easily dismissed with Bluesky’s very solid blocking option. However, there was one case just the other week, one that inspired this very post.

On the occasion of President Jimmy Carter’s passing, I posted this MAD cover, dated March 1978:


Along with it, I included the caption “This was as defining an image of Jimmy Carter for me in my childhood as just about anything else. RIP.” You can see the post right here for yourself.

This wasn’t intended as an overtly political post (even if posting about a former President at all is inherently political). It was simply a comment on the fact that, as a child at the time, my primary interaction with politics on that scale was via entertainment aimed at me (or not necessarily at me, but seen by me anyway, such as Dan Aykroyd’s impression of Carter on Saturday Night Live). To this day, this drawing (by Jack Rickard) exists in my brain as the primary picture in my mind of the man. I mean, they don’t call these the “formative years” for nothing.

I figured, if I were to get any objection to this post at all, it’d be from someone who was annoyed that I didn’t discuss Carter’s full legacy, good and/or ill, or that I reduced him to this goofy image. And I was ready to argue, if I had to, with, well, what I said in the previous paragraph.

What I got instead was this, a straight up objection to me even using MAD at all. You can see my immediate response, and his, um, whatever that is in the image, too:


Not shown is my second response, where I told him 1) I’ve discussed MAD plenty of times on my comics blog, with its own category, and 2) I carry MAD in my store, both new issues and old. And as you can see by his second response, he did see that post and it did nuttin’ a’tall to mollify the guy. So, to Blocktown he went.

Digging a little deeper into the fella, I discovered he was on several Bluesky “blocklists” (lists which, if you follow, block everyone on that list) which tells me this isn’t unusual behavior for him. And a fellow blogger has told me he’s turned up in their comments whenever he uses images from MAD for the same reasons “Alfred” gives above…not liking comic book guys who talk about his favorite magazine.

It’s…amazing that someone puts this much vitriol into complaining about something that, let’s face it, isn’t real. Or at least aimed at the wrong people, to give him the barest benefit of a doubt. As online pal ThisIsBrian said, “That sure is a lot of worrying for a guy who’s using the name of the most famous non-worrier there is.”

Compared to the abuse some folks get online, this is nothing. Some trolls out there can be real dangers, with threats and massive online pile-ons of their victims and showing intentions of (and following through with) real world crimes. The guys I’ve mentioned here are just minor annoyances, bemusing at best, and easily dealt with. They aren’t much different from the “Bozos” of yore, spitting out anger and insults, just more specific about their particular triggers. I’m betting that in person, they’re also just like “Bozo,” unassuming and bearing sheepish grins when outed for their behavior, their rage curtailed in fear of actual consequences.

I still have my copy of the original.

filed under Categories mad magazine 2 Comments

So the new issue of the still-going-despite-reports-of-death MAD Magazine has this as its back cover:


Which is a good gag, playing off of this infamous cover from 1974:


When this cover hit the stands 50 years ago, the stands hit back, resulting in copies being returned and apologies made, though decades later, if I recall correctly, original copies were given away to new subscribers for a time.

It’s too bad this new iteration wasn’t the front cover of the new issue, but if they couldn’t get away with it back then, it seems unlikely they could get away with even this altered version now. It’s a good gag landing a solid blow on A.I. in arts, which you and I know is a problem but perhaps Johnny Q. Public could use a reminder.

Not so much mad as jealous.

filed under Categories mad magazine, original art, pal brook 4 Comments

So pal Brook (whom I should make a category for on this site, he comes up often enough) (and so I have) made another original art acquisition…this time, an original page from a Mad paperback by Angelo Torres:


This is, believe it or not, Brook’s fifth page from the same book. I told him to keep going and get all the art from it…surely that wouldn’t be too hard.

I believe the book in question is History Gone Mad from 1977, drawn by Torres and written by Tom Koch. Brook only told me the name of the book multiple times and my aged brain didn’t retain the info. But, that seems to be the likely suspect.

And the piece is great…I love seeing the paste-up work and the handwritten page number on the original art at the top. And the linework is so clean, as is the toning. This is a beautifully and expertly executed piece of illustration.

The hand “acting” is wonderful, with the fella digging into his pocket for change, and the messenger waiting for the tip to be placed in his hand:


And oh, that messenger’s face — perfection:


And yes, that is a little “a. torres” signature newly added to the piece at the bottom there, between those wonderful pairs of shoes. What a great art piece this is. Thanks to Brook for letting me get my dirty hands and even dirtier blog all over it.

Just trying to not make anyone mad here.

filed under Categories mad magazine, publishing 18 Comments

So a little while back I was at the local grocery store, doing my weekly hunting and gathering as my Paleolithic ancestors once did, when I paused at the magazine section.

I used to love the magazine section of grocery stores. While my dad shopped, I, as a young Mikester, would hang out near all the books and magazines trying to pick which one I’d be able to talk my way into including with the evening’s haul. I was generally successful, as both my parents, like me, were voracious readers and we’d usually come home with a book or magazine(s) or both for them as well.

And the magazine sections used to be huge, or at least they appeared to be so to me in the 1970s/early 1980s. So many choices, so many weird and wonderful mags, and this was the era when you could still find comic book publications. Not so much the comic books, though there was a limited selection at some shops, but, like, the Marvel magazines were a little more common. That’s where I first spotted Pizzazz, for example, eventually getting a subscription (only for it to be cancelled shortly thereafter, with Amazing Spider-Man replacing the rest of the sub).

One quick memory I had specifically of the Marvel mags at the grocery store was when I spotted the Hulk mag on the shelf. I must have declared out loud to myself “hey, it’s Hulk” or something to that effect as an adult walking by, a really old guy, probably at least in his 40s, replied to me by cheerfully growling “HULK!” and, like, lifting up his arms, fists clenched, and stomping by Lou Ferrigno-style.

Anyway, I loved me the magazine sections way back when. The exotic allure of them has declined somewhat in my later years, as my employment has generally revolved around managing shops that were essentially all magazine racks. But that didn’t stop me on my recent visit to the grocery store, as I gazed upon the one section over which I used to obsess.

Much smaller now, of course, not just because my size relative to the rack has increased, but it’s just plain physically smaller. Not so many paperbacks, not so many magazines, not as much wild varieties of publications (wither CB Citizens’ Band? Wither UFO Report?).

But still present, in some form, is Mad. As a kid, Mad was an easy sell to take home as my dad read it when he was a kid, and realized a true and proper education included exposure to The Usual Gang of Idiots. Of course, today, the actual Mad magazine exists only in comic shops (like my own), but special publications are still offered to more general outlets. Like, say, grocery stores, where I spotted this item on the shelf:


Magazine-sized, squarebound, a mix of color and black and white interiors, featuring mostly the direct spoofs of sci-fi movies (like Star Wars, natch, and 2001: A Space Odyssey) along with other articles making fun of same. Out of nostalgia (both for Mad and for “buying something from the grocery store magazine rack”) along with a desire to have some of these parodies available to me in a slightly more permanent format, I threw it into the cart. Because I’m an adult now and I can buy dumb things if I want to. Usually. If I have the money.

An interesting thing I noticed in this publication is something I hadn’t noticed in Mad before. Well, okay, it’s not like I’ve been keeping tabs on this or anything, but I noticed a little editorial rejiggering of one of the spoofs. A spoof I am very familiar with, having read it when it originally came out about a million times. Let us go back to the heady days of Cover Date January 1978 (probably more like around Fall ’77) and take a peek at Mad #196, parodying one of the biggest and most influential movies in Hollywood history:


Oh yeah, that’s the stuff. And the parody itself is beautifully illustrated by Harry North, Esq. (and surprisingly not by the usual Mad movie parodist Mort Drucker), with some solid jokery by stalwarts Larry Siegel and Dick De Bartolo). However, one gag in the original…let’s say it didn’t age well:


Yes, I censored it slightly, don’t yell at me, people inclined to yell about this sort of thing. Anyway, the gag is playing off the public perception of some that Threepio’s…prissiness reads as “gay,” and this panel is leaning into and exaggerating that idea, complete with The Gay Stance. The derogatory use of that specific word was probably seen as okay because 1) it could be read as poking fun at that perception, and 2) as Bully‘s pal John mentioned to me when he helped me track down that original panel, the term had been used in All in the Family and was probably thought to be fair game.

Still, the joke can come across as homophobic (and while Artoo, from inference, may be a dick in the movies, I think we all prefer to assume he’s not that much of a dick), and that particular use of that term has, as we’ve hopefully grown more aware of and sensitive to the needs of others, become not acceptable.

As such, here’s how the panel appears in the 2023 publication I’ve purchased:


Okay, the joke…hmmm, surface level, still not great. And we’re farther away from the “Threepio is obviously gay” idea that was once so widespread, piggybacking on the Star Wars phenomenon itself, and thus losing that context to inform the panel. And Artoo still comes across as a real jerk.

But That Word is gone, because in today’s culture just casually throwing it out there for a gag like this, is Not Cool, Dude. Not a great joke, particularly removed from the wider cultural context which, frankly, didn’t help it all that much in the first place, but at least now it won’t read as just straight-up offensive. It’ll just be normal levels of offensive.

Over the years, Mad hadn’t necessarily had the…greatest track record with jokes involving the LGBTQIA community early on, punching down more often than not. I believe, though, they’ve avoided reprinting much of that material. But the Star Wars parody is…well, it’s the original Star Wars parody from Mad, it can’t be easily buried. And sometimes things just don’t age well, so if they wanted to keep reprinting the Star Wars parody, well, someone made the decision to take out the slur.

Like I said, I don’t know if this was as widespread practice with Mad‘s reprints, or it they purposely avoided that content until they couldn’t.

About twenty years ago Mad put out a special that included all the Star Wars parodies at that point. I had a copy of that, but no longer, and I believe That Word was still intact. If anyone can confirm, or if they know of other examples of Mad fiddling with jokes from back then that don’t hold up now, please let me know.
 
 
 
 

thanks to Bully, the Little Shocked Bull, for production help. DON’T LOOK, BULLY

Al Jaffee (1921-2023).

filed under Categories mad magazine, obituary 4 Comments

So on the occasion of Al Jaffee’s 99th birthday (and my 51st) I wrote about getting this wonderful book:


…which remains one of my prize possessions. Like I said in that post, I was but a young Mikester and had to save my allowance a bit to afford this extravagant purchase. But it was money well invested, as the book was provided me many solid laughs over the decades, not just from reading it but simply from remembering it and the joy it brought me.

One of my favorite articles in that book, and one that still comes unbidden to my mind on a more regular basis than you might think, is the one where Jaffee built actual physical models of purported kids’ drawings:


It’s an odd example of Jaffee’s work, as it doesn’t showcase his illustrations (aside from those alleged kid drawings) but it’s memorable nonetheless.

And as per my last post, I found at least one of the MAD paperbacks pictured on Mark Evanier’s site, MAD Monstrosities:


Alas, nearly all my paperback books remain boxed up and not terribly easy to access, but I did manage to find this one. My MAD Book of Magic remains AWOL, but I know it’s around here somewhere. But Monstrosities is filled with great mostly full-page cartooning filled with delightful grotesqueries as only Jaffee can lay them down on the page. I don’t know how long I’ve had this, but I must have picked it up during my prime MAD reading age, so probably around 1979-1981.

Searching my shelves I found another book that, frankly, I’d forgotten I had:


Based on the price sticker in the corner, this was obviously a thrift store pick-up. I’m not the biggest fan of the “Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions” gags…I mean, I like ’em fine, obviously enough to drop $1.99 on this book, but I always preferred Jaffee’s other efforts. But his artwork is always wonderful to behold, especially in this larger format (and no one does A Prance quite like Jaffee, as you can see on that person on the left of the cover there). Plus, I do have to say I did always like the added touch of an extra empty word balloon for you to add your own Snappy Comeback. Were they as snappy as Big Al’s? Probably not, but it was nice of him to offer you the chance.

Also, come to think of it, that’s kind of a Snappy Answer to a Stupid Question on the cover of that Monstrosities book, isn’t there? It’s also interesting that “Snappy Answers” is what’s referenced on the cover, and not “Fold-ins” but, as shown on the cover, you were likely to get more of one than the other in here, and why remind people of a feature that’s not present in the book?

What he’s probably going down in history for is the aforementioned Fold-ins, a play on the “Fold-Outs” you might find in, say, certain gentlemen’s magazines of note. It’s clever, it’s intriguing (as you try to guess the final image before folding and finding out), and a little annoying if you’re a comic shop owner dealing in old comics and magazines and you have to grade down most MADs you get in because the back cover is creased. But, such is the sacrifice for art.

And what art it was. I didn’t even mention his “Hawks and Doves” strips. Or the articles about new, needed inventions or how he drew the absolutely best vomit in the biz. Or that one issue of MAD where instead of a Fold-In he created a gag strip where if you held it up to the light, an image of Alfred E. Neuman would appear. Or his Tall Tales strips. Or the fact that he was drawing for several Golden Age books long before MAD was even around.

He was in all respects a legend. I’m glad he lived such a long life and could see how much everyone loved him and appreciated his work.

So long, Al.