There have been 486 issues of Mad Magazine. That's a staggering number. Why, as the editors themselves would tell you, that must represent more than a hundred jokes.
Mike Slaubaugh, over at this site, tracks things like who's been in how many issues. At the moment, Al Jaffee has been in the most with 437 issues and my partner Sergio Aragonés is first runner-up with 410. Al and Sergio, by the way, will both be Guests of Honor at this year's Comic-Con International and I'll doubtlessly be hosting a panel with the both of them, plus a few other longtime Mad contributors.
Ah, but what about consecutive appearances in the magazine? What about that? Mike tracks that over on this page where we see that at the moment, writer Dick DeBartolo has been in 384 consecutive issues (103-present) while Sergio has been in 375 consecutive issues (112-present). Try as he may, my amigo has been unable to pull into the lead. Every time he gets something in the magazine, so does Dick, probably for no other reason than to deny Sergio the lead. (We recently wrote about The DeBartolo Streak here…and I guess I shouldn't call it The DeBartolo Streak because that conjures up a very unpleasant mental image.)
Last night, I raised Sergio's hopes for naught. I haven't seen the current issue yet but Dave Mackey e-mailed me to say that Dick D. didn't seem to have an article in it. True, Dick is a Creative Consultant for the magazine but we don't count that. Besides, being a Creative Consultant for Mad is like being a Campaign Adviser for Fred Thompson. There seemed to be no actual article by DeBartolo in the issue but Sergio is in it. It says on the cover, "Not Assembled by Mexicans" but it doesn't say that one didn't write or draw a couple of pages and a batch of skinny cartoons in the margins.
I called Sergio and told him that instead of being nine issues behind Dick, he was now only eight. He was gleeful and I could hear him turning cartwheels and doing a Russian dance in celebration.
Later today though, I must dash those hopes I raised. This morn, Dave wrote me to note that on Dick DeBartolo's website, he says that in the latest issue — the one of which we speak — he "…wrote the bios of The Whitest Kids U' Know." Damn. Sorry, Sergio. But take consolation in the fact that most people think you have the better mustache.