Mad Magazine

In the mid-sixties when I was (ahem) younger, the best day of the month was when MAD magazine came in the mail. I’d buy a couple of bags of sunflower seeds, hole up in my room, and spend all afternoon reading every word of MAD, stopping only after I’d carefully tri-folded the back cover (there’s a trick to it). My mother professed to be appalled by my taste in literature, but if my MAD went missing, I’d usually find it on her bedside table.

William Gaines began publishing MAD in 1952, and by the early 60s, all of the artists and writers that made MAD great, Dick DeBartolo, Frank Jacobs, Mort Drucker, Sergio Aragonés, Al Jaffee, Paul Coker Jr., Dave Berg, and Don Martin, were on board. It was a fun place to work because Gaines was a MADman. When MAD’s only subscriber in Haiti failed to renew, Gaines flew the MAD staff there to get him to change his mind. He did.

Gaines died in 1992, and MAD began its creep toward corporatism, finally accepting advertising in 2001. Now it’s a slick, colorful, watered-down version of its formerly black-and-white, independent self. There are still funny bits, but its editors are no longer fearless, and circulation is less than one tenth what it was in 1974, MAD’s heyday.

Still, it was a good run. The library has these books that commemorate it:

Mad Art: A Visual Celebration of the Art of Mad Magazine and the Idiots Who Create It Evanier, Mark

Mad: Cover to Cover: 48 Years, 6 Months & 3 Days of Mad Magazine Covers Jacobs, Frank


Mad: The Half-Wit and Wisdom of Alfred E. Neuman: Classic Pearls of Idiocy

Completely Mad: A History of the Comic Book and Magazine Reidelbach, Maria

MAD About the Sixties: The Best of the Decade

Good Days and Mad: A Hysterical Tour Behind the Scenes at Mad Magazine DeBartolo, Dick.

(Austin Public Library subscribes to MAD magazine and MAD Kids.)