The magazine known as MAD got started about the same time I did. I bought my first copy of it at the old Westward Ho market on Westwood Boulevard here in Los Angeles. It was issue #70, cover-dated April 1962…so it probably came out in January of that year when I was not quite ten years of age.
Its impact on me was so overwhelming that I began to search local second-hand book shops for back issues and by the time MAD #71 came out, I owned copies of all the magazine issues plus most of the paperbacks and specials. From where I sit as I blog today, I am about twenty feet from my complete run and I own other MAD memorabilia. I even have one of its star cartoonists — some guy named Sergio — who is here much of the time. I consider him part of my collection.
So I love MAD. I love some eras of it more than others but I love MAD and have contributed to it and written a book on its history. I also know (or knew) most of its major contributors…like its recently-departed (but still very much alive) editor, John Ficarra. For years I told John that though I liked him very much, if I ever thought he was ruining MAD, I would rip his friggin' guts out. I like to think that's the main reason he did such a good job as editor there: Fear of me.
As you may have heard, MAD has migrated. It's no longer based in New York with that staff there. It's now edited in Burbank, California with that staff there, headed up by my longtime friend Bill Morrison. MAD has been slightly reinvented and revamped — not as much as some feared when the changeover was announced but there was certainly at least the slight possibility that it might stink.
This worried me because, as we've established, I love MAD. I also like Bill and didn't really want to rip his friggin' guts out.
I spent much of yesterday over at the offices of DC Comics, which of course publishes MAD. I was there to discuss another matter but when I had to wait for one meeting, someone handed me a copy of the new MAD #1 to pass the time. It'll be on newsstands any day now and this was the first I'd seen of it. First reaction? I was actually a little scared: What if it sucked the big one and I had to go rip out my pal Bill Morrison's friggin' guts?
Then again, at that moment, Bill was just down the hall in his office. So if I did have to rip out his friggin' guts, it would be very convenient. I wouldn't have to make a special trip to do that.
Well, I'm happy to say no gut-ripping was necessary. It's pretty good. It also still has much of the old Usual Gang of Idiots. It's got Desmond Devlin and Dick DeBartolo and a fold-in by Al Jaffee and "Spy Vs. Spy" by Peter Kuper and some stuff by that guy Sergio and other familiar styles. I laughed out loud at a number of things, which is all an issue of MAD really has to do. I suggest you give it a try.
My biggest complaint? You're going to think this is potrzebie but I think the paper is too good. Someone picked out a great, durable stock which is so good, it may even make it difficult to fold-in your fold-in. (I didn't attempt this.) It just doesn't feel — in the tactile sense — like MAD and great paper somehow makes good but crude drawings seem misplaced. I wish they'd had this stock when the magazine printed Mort Drucker, Jack Davis and Wally Wood. Even if you don't buy a copy, grope one and see if you don't agree with me.
So deep exhale. Bill is safe until #2 and I have the feeling the new MAD will just get better and better. If it goes downhill…well, there are just some things a man's gotta do.