The first twenty-three issues of MAD Magazine weren't a magazine. It was a comic book and I don't know that anyone even referred to it as MAD Magazine then. But that comic book's editor-writer Harvey Kurtzman did brilliant and funny things in it, aided by a sensational squadron of artists.

Here's something I find kinda interesting. Maybe you will too…

According to all accounts, MAD was started because Kurtzman — a slow-and-steady writer-editor and sometimes-artist — felt he wasn't making enough money. He was writing, editing and sometimes drawing his two scrupulously-researched, adventure-type historical comics that William M. Gaines was publishing as part of the E.C. line of comics. Gaines and Kurtzman later disagreed as to which of them suggested launching MAD because it seemed like something Kurtzman could produce more swiftly than the heavily-researched comics, nor did they agree on which of them named it MAD. But there was no dispute it was started as a way to perhaps increase Kurtzman's income.

Here's the part I find kinda interesting. Kurtzman's great squad of artists on those war/adventure comics consisted mainly of Will Elder, Jack Davis, Wally Wood and John Severin. And then he did the new humor comic with another great squad of artists — Will Elder, Jack Davis, Wally Wood and John Severin. He used the same guys and if he'd scoured the entire industry and had his pick of anyone then in it, he probably couldn't have done any better than Will Elder, Jack Davis, Wally Wood and John Severin.

MAD didn't catch on right away. If it had been a DC Comic in the late-sixties or most of the seventies, it would have been declared a flop and canceled as soon as they saw the sales figures of the second issue…maybe even the first. But Gaines kept it going and before long, it was not only the best-selling comic in his line, it was the one publication he had that survived the horror/crime comic purges of the fifties. It kept him publishing, made him a very wealthy man and spawned countless imitations.

A lot of people think that MAD went from being a ten-cent comic book to a twenty-five-cent (at first) magazine to escape the comic book censorship and the Comics Code. Nope. It changed formats because Kurtzman was embarrassed to be working in the comic book industry. Comics were printed via the cheapest printing possible on the cheapest paper available. Most of the rest of Gaines' line consisted of titles like Tales From the Crypt which many people regarded as a kind of pornography…and Kurtzman didn't disagree that much. He wanted to be in a more respectable kind of publishing.

When he received an offer to work for Pageant Magazine — then, a more respectable kind of publishing — he told Gaines he wanted to leave. Gaines panicked. Most of his comic book line was teetering on extinction. Only MAD looked like it might have a healthy future and Gaines was convinced that only Kurtzman could make the magazine work. He told his restless writer-editor something like, "Harvey, you always said you wished MAD was a slick magazine instead of a comic book. If you stay, I'll turn MAD into a slick magazine." Kurtzman agreed to stay. It kept MAD on the newsstands when many distributors were refusing to carry Gaines' comic book line but that's not the reason MAD became a slick; just a happy side effect.

The first week of May, 1955, the first issue of the twenty-five-cent MAD hit newsstands. It was #24, it was a sensation and it only got more sensational after that but Kurtzman didn't stick around. Hugh Hefner — then flush with cash due to the early success of Playboy — made Kurtzman one of those offers you can't refuse. Harvey couldn't, at least. As of #29, Al Feldstein was the editor of MAD — a job he did for the next 29 years as MAD became a top-selling American institution.

And believe it or not, I wrote all of the above just to lead into a discussion of MAD's famous cover logo. Kurtzman designed it and it first appeared on the first magazine issue. It looked like this…

Harvey did the drawings of the little nymphs frolicking around in the logo but was not happy with how it came out. Harvey was rarely happy with how anything he did came out. One of the causes of friction between Gaines and Kurtzman was that Harvey was the kind of creator who did something, then he did it over and he did it over and he did it over and then he did it over and might have preferred to never send the thing to press; to just spend all eternity trying to improve it another billionth of a percent. Wally Wood, who did finished art over a lot of Kurtzman layouts, told me that Harvey would get it as good as it was going to get on the third or fourth try, then do it ten more times of declining merit, before handing it off.

That mix of perfectionism and fear was the reason that under Kurtzman, the magazine version of MAD, though officially a bi-monthly, kept coming out late. There were three months between his second and third issues, four between his third issue and his fourth issue, etc. At some point in there, Kurtzman even took the time to redo the logo. He redid it for #27. Here's a before-and-after and if you click on it, you can enlarge it…

I once asked John Putnam, who was MAD's first art director, if someone else did the outline of the letters and then Kurtzman drew in his charming little creatures. He said yes but he didn't remember who the calligraphy person was, other than that it wasn't someone who did much (if any) other work for the magazine. I didn't know enough at the time to ask if he was thinking of whoever did the outlines for the first version, the second version or both. Kurtzman was not known for this lettering designs so I suspected both. Then I asked Feldstein and he wasn't 100% sure but he was semi-certain it was John Putnam. So that's as far as I got with that mystery.

The fine folks at Heritage Auctions are about to auction off the original artwork to the second logo — the one that became pretty much official — and a lot of online folks are unaware there were two versions of that logo. There were, of course, lots of variations of it on MAD and MAD products over the years. Kurtzman's nymphs took the covers of #55, #67, #78 off, were parodied on the cover of #76, and then disappeared after #86 only to reappear on #93, #95 and very rarely after that. Sergio Aragonés, Al Jaffee, Don Martin and Antonio Prohias all took turns replacing Kurtzman's creatures with their own.

I read MAD for years before I paid any attention to what Harvey Kurtzman had doodled in the original official logo. Once I became aware of those nymphs (or whatever they were), I wondered what they were, who they were, what the hell they had to do with MAD, etc. The few times I got to talk with Harvey, I wish I'd asked him…but I knew him well enough to believe he had something on his mind. I only wish I knew what.

Hey, we haven't had a Three Stooges short on this blog lately. Here's Dizzy Detectives from 1943, although the opening scene is a reuse of footage from Pardon My Scotch, which the Stooges made in 1935…

And if you didn't like that film with Moe, Larry and Curly, maybe you'll like almost the exact same script with Joe (not yet a Stooge) Besser and his occasional partner, Hawthorne. This is a poorly-colorized version of Fraidy Cat from 1951. Same studio, same script, same director, same gorilla (I think), some of the same footage and different knuckleheads…

I assume everyone knows that I think Donald Trump and his mob are the worst things to ever happen to this country — or at least to the guiding principles of this country, science, equality, honesty and all that stuff Jesus Christ said about caring about those in need. I don't write a lot about this here because you only have about eighty zillion other places online to read that kind of thing. It would be easy to make this blog be about nothing else but I think I give service by writing mainly about other matters and sometimes directing you to certain of those eighty zillion other places.

One of the recent outrages was Pete Hegseth — our Secretary of Defense or War or Whatever The Hell He Is — trying to decree what the press can write about matters under his jurisdiction and what they cannot. It's about as unAmerican as anything anyone in our nation's history has ever done so I was glad to see this statement today…

And I was delighted to read this statement which turned up on the web soon after…

You probably saw one or both already. I just wanted to have them on my blog.

I'm sure a lot of you have been waiting for me to come across a rendition of "Bohemian Rhapsody" played by 28 trombonists. Well, wait no longer — and thank Bill Lentz for telling me about this one…

This is the final part of my flashback to 2006 when I underwent Gastric Bypass Surgery. Before you dive into what follows, make sure you've read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6 and Part 7. And if you've stuck with me this long, thanks for the sticking.

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So I began losing weight at a brisk clip — brisker than I'd imagined possible. Carolyn would look at me in bed and ask, "Where's Mark? What have you done with Mark?"

For at least ten days after the surgery — maybe a little longer — I had absolutely no appetite.  None.  Couldn't have downed a Hershey's Kiss if you'd demanded at gunpoint that I do so.  I didn't feel the least bit hungry, not even when folks around me were wolfing down chow that I once loved.  It wasn't so much that I was repulsed by food as that I just felt utterly indifferent to the concept of eating. Eventually, I did some nibbling, then some snacking…then finally, some actual, smaller-than-before meals.

I did, of course, hop on a bathroom scale at least once a day and notate how much less of me there was.  I can no longer find the little chart I kept but I recall it worked out to 65 pounds in the first 65 days and almost 75 in the first 75. The losses slowed but when I attended Comic-Con that year, I was a good fifty pounds under my weight on Gastric Bypass Day.  A lot of people commented on how much slimmer and healthier I looked.  A number of folks didn't seem to notice or care.

A few months after Comic-Con, Carolyn and I attended a play and we found ourselves seated next to an actress I knew well but hadn't seen in a year or two.  By this point, I was almost a hundred pounds below what I'd weighed the last time she saw me and we both waited for her to say something — anything! — that indicated she'd noticed but there was nothing.  Not a word.  Before the play started, we talked for a good twenty minutes and she didn't seem aware than I had lost almost as much as she probably weighed.

At Intermission, we all visited our respective rest rooms and when the actress returned to her seat next to me, she was over-the-top in telling me how great I looked, how wonderful it was that I'd dropped so much tummy, etc., all preceded by a "I was so happy to see you, I forgot to mention…"  It sounded clumsy and later, Carolyn confessed to me, "I couldn't stand her not noticing it any longer so I pointed it out to her when we were in the Ladies Room."

Getting back to that Comic-Con — actually, getting back to a time before the surgery — my splendid Dr. Preston had told me something that he felt I should know.  "Mark," he said, "you're going to lose at least a hundred pounds in the coming months.  There will be a major change in your appearance and while many people you know will cheer and congratulate you, you need to be prepared for something.  At least one person in your life — and it may be more than one or two — will hate you for it."

At some length — I can't re-create the whole speech here — he went on about how all people who have a wide circle of friends and acquaintances have within that circle, at least a few people who mask their own resentments and jealousy in order to "get along."  But sometimes when someone scores a big success or improves themselves the way I was (hopefully) about to improve me, the resentments and jealousies come bursting out.

I had never known Doc Preston to be wrong but I was still surprised by how right he was.  A couple of folks said pretty bitchy things, the worst coming from a writer I knew.  He stopped me, made mention of how many pounds I lost but said I'd pay the ultimate price for it.  Having read a few articles somewhere and thus becoming an expert, he said the surgery was a dangerous fad and I'd certainly die within a few years.  He could not conceal a suggestion in his smirk that it would serve me right for whatever I'd done he didn't like.  I think it was getting more work than he was getting just then.

The punchline to this story is, of course, that I am still here and this guy died in 2019.

One odd thing which happened to me — and doctors I've discussed this with have been at a loss to explain it — was that my sweet tooth went away.  I'd already given up  Coca-Cola and other soft drinks, and I never liked coffee or tea.  I tried fruit juices but increasingly, I found them too sweet.  For a while, I tried watering down orange juice but it got to the point where I decided to drop the O.J. and just drink only water. To this day, that's about all I drink.

Then around a year after the surgery, I was in Downtown Las Vegas and in need of lunch.  This is 2007, remember.  Buffets were no longer cost-effective for me — I couldn't eat enough to justify the price of the upscale ones but I liked making a selection of food before my eyes. When you have as many food allergies as I do, it's great to inspect something before you commit to its consumption. The Plaza Hotel was offering what they called their 7-7-7 Buffet for $7.77 and that seemed downscale enough for me.  I went in, paid and started with a not-huge plate of baked chicken, rice and carrots. I also ended with that one plate.

The lady who took away the dirty dishes took mine and said, "Time for seconds!"  I thought for a second, realized I was full and told her, "No, I don't think I'll be having seconds. Or thirds or fourths or even tenths."  She looked at me strangely and said, "I've been bussing dishes in buffets for twenty years and I've never seen anyone not go back for at least a second plate.  I've seen people do seven or eight but never one."

I said, "There's a first time for everything" and she said, "Well, then head over to the dessert table and help yourself there!"

I walked over to a spread that included several different kinds of cake slices, several different cuts of pie, dishes of chocolate pudding, tapioca pudding, bread pudding, butterscotch pudding, eclairs, custards, flan, cannoli, tiramisù, donuts, chocolate chip cookies, oatmeal cookies, about six flavors of cupcakes and a whole area where you could make your own sundae with about twenty toppings and a machine that output soft-serv ice cream in vanilla, chocolate or both in a swirl.  I stared at it for a moment and the dish-removal lady walked by saying, "Don't you want to eat just everything there?"

And I replied, amazing myself as much as it amazed her, "No."

Then and there, I realized I'd been eating such things lately not out of cravings but out of habit. Nothing within me cared about them. This was in 2007 and I haven't eaten anything like that since then with the following exception. Every week or so, I down one of these teensy cups…

But that's it and since I used to eat a lot of Orange Jell-O when I was a kid, I think I'm eating them now for the nostalgia, not the sugar. As I said, no doctor has ever been able to explain how G.B.S. took away my taste for sweet treats but I don't miss them…or other things (like sodas) I thought I couldn't give up.

My weight has gone up and down since then but it's down now and I'm going to do my darnedest to keep it down…and that's the end of my Gastric Bypass Story. But it's not the end of this article because I still need to tell you about Anna.

Anna was the lady I met in the hospital just before our respective surgical procedures. After we were each prepped for surgery, we were lying on adjoining gurneys for maybe twenty minutes talking — mainly about how she hoped to drop enough bulk quickly and find a second husband. Afterwards, we had adjoining rooms in the post-surgical wing and she was part of the little expeditions I led of very large (still) patients hiking around the floor our rooms were on. Most of us exchanged phone numbers and e-mail addresses but Anna was the only one with whom I had any communication after we both left the hospital.

It turned out, she left but had to go back a few times due to little post-surgical complications. I didn't but she did, the difference probably having something to do with her being older than I was but not as tall. She was simply not in as good shape when she had her G.B.S. than I was when I had mine. Yes, she lost weight and yes, she found a guy interested in marrying her. She wrote me that she looked wonderful and he was wonderful and life was wonderful and they were talking about adopting a wonderful child or two after they were wed…

…and that's what was in the last e-mail I ever received from her. She never replied to my replies and I'd like to think that was because she was too busy being with her new hubby and maybe that kid or two. There are other possibilities but I hope you'll join me in wanting to think that's why I never heard from her again.

In the 1920's, Buster Keaton made some of the most brilliant, innovative comedy movies anyone ever made. Then there was a crash and he made a lot of movies that were nowhere near as good and his career — and in some ways, his life — just went down, down, down for the rest of his life.

Film scholars debate just wha' happened. There's general agreement that he was harmed by — in no particular order — the coming of sound, the loss of control over his career and films, his marriage and personal life, changing tastes in film, alcohol and a few other factors. There is not general agreement as to which did him the most damage, how much of that damage was self-inflicted and how much of it was preventable. Here's a short video that offers some views of the downfall of one of the movie industry's greatest talents…

Several folks have written to ask me to post Woody Allen's tribute to Diane Keaton and a couple sent me copies of it, all formatted to fit on this blog.  But it doesn't belong to me and I respect Mr. Allen's right to control where his work appears…so no.  There are a number of news stories like this one and this one and this one (that last one may be paywalled) that excerpt from it and I suspect anyone can find the full, non-paywalled text with enough Googling.  But I ain't posting it here, thank you.

…to those who wanted to read the article to which I linked in the previous item but ran smack-dab, Wile E. Coyote style, into a paywall.  I somehow didn't hit it and had no way of knowing others would.  I also didn't realize Woody Allen had chosen to give it to a politically-controversial website…in fact, one that John Oliver eviscerated on his show last night.  I'll leave the link up but if anyone finds a non-paywalled source, lemme know.  I assume Mr. Allen just wanted it out there for people to read and didn't know enough about the Internet to know so many would have to subscribe or sign up for access.

As I'm sure you know by now, Diane Keaton died a few days ago. I have nothing but the obvious to say about her — great actress, lovely screen presence, was in some wonderful movies, etc. — but Woody Allen has plenty to say about her.

I'm not entirely sure what this is except that it's the theme song to one of my favorite cartoon shows…

Pat Kelly wrote to ask…

I saw a partial reprint of the DC First Issue Special where Jack Kirby created the new Manhunter. It had a very intriguing all-text last panel: "Want to see the clash between Manhunter and The Hog? If so, write and tell us! MANHUNTER / P.O. Box 336 / Newbury Park, Calif. 91320."

The California address makes me think this was Jack's own mailbox. Is that correct? Were you working with The King when he produced Manhunter? Do you recall what kind of response this got, why he wanted these sent to him directly instead of DC (I can guess that part) and what response if any Kirby made?

I was not actually working with Jack when he did that Manhunter story though I was visiting the Kirby home often and being of whatever help I could be to Jack and Roz. As I recall, the issues of First Issue Special where Jack introduced this version of Manhunter and another creation named Atlas received virtually no reaction at all.

Both were "pilot" issues Jack did at the request of then-publisher Carmine Infantino. DC was looking to expand their line to compete with Marvel's concurrent expansion so they had a lot of people doing pilot stories for potential new comics but they weren't willing to gamble on starting many of those proposals as new ongoing titles. A few of those pilots were launched as new comics. A few wound up as one-shot issues of First Issue Special. A few weren't printed then but they found places for the material later. A few wound up in two very-limited-edition books DC put together called Cancelled Comics Cavalcade. A few were never printed (or finished) at all.

That was Jack's P.O. Box number and I'm fairly sure it's no longer active. He got it — well, he had Roz rent it — because when he first arrived at DC, the company intended to keep the fan mail away from him. They didn't want it going to California where he was. They didn't want the letter pages in his books to be assembled by his assistants (i.e., my pal Steve Sherman and me). In fact, Steve and I wrote text pages for the first issues of New Gods, Forever People and Mister Miracle and without telling Jack, the New York office discarded what we wrote and had Marv Wolfman write a substitute. Jack, who was supposed to be the editor of those comics, didn't find out until those first issues were on sale.

Jack fought a lot of battles with DC and lost some pretty important ones. Getting control of the letter pages in his comics — though not Jimmy Olsen — was one of the less-important ones he won. When he did, he had Roz rent the P.O. Box and it was also used when Jack went back to Marvel and had a battle with certain folks in the editorial division about what went into the letter columns of the books he did for them there.

I don't know what Trump's so upset about. I didn't win the Nobel Peace Prize either and I've never bombed anyone or sent armed troops into American cities. If you want to know why he's claiming what he's claiming, Mark Hertling explains what happened with those seven wars and why the seven "peaces" of which Donald is so proud of still has people trying to kill other people.

Hertling's article was published a few weeks ago and is out of date on the supposed eighth war — the Israel/Gaza mess. Fred Kaplan updates us on that one and allows as how there has been some impressive progress in dialing that one down but they've got a long, long way to go.

The folks who make TiVos have announced they are no longer making TiVos. There are articles all over the 'net (like this one) that try to explain wha' happened to their marketplace but it seems to me they were done in by two factors. One was that almost every cable company in the world decided to offer its subscribers a proprietary digital video recorder and to make it difficult, if not impossible, to record and watch programs on anything else.

Over the years, I got my television programming from a number of different cable or satellite sources and any time anything wasn't working properly, the suppliers' first response was to junk my TiVos and use their devices. Once, more than fifteen years ago, a service technician on the phone for one provider told me his company had just purchased the TiVo company and was shutting it down. Even people working for Trump never lied so baldly.

I always refused to abandon TiVo. I checked out a number of cable-provider-supplied DVRs and every single one was grossly inferior to whatever the TiVo people were offering at the time. On several occasions, I'd tell a service person I didn't want the DVR they offered and they'd ship me one anyway and add it to my monthly bill. It was a battle I won several times in the short run but couldn't help but lose eventually. The other thing that did TiVo in was the shift to streaming services that required no hardware except for a "Smart" TV.

I was a TiVo user from the start. I remember demonstrating my first one for friends who dropped by, none of whom had heard of such a thing…but immediately wanted one. Before that first TiVo, if you wanted to record a TV show in order to time-shift your viewing, you had to do it with Betamax or VHS cassettes that were never easy to program or even to keep up with what was where on which tape. TiVo was just easier in every way. But now that's over and the TiVo company — whatever's left of it and whoever owns it this week — will focus on streaming protocols and other projects, no longer leading an industry or even being particularly prominent in one.

I had to toss in the towel and go to streaming a few years ago but I still have about eight different TiVos in my house or garage. I tell myself I'm keeping them around for when I have time to plug them in again and dub off the programs I still have stored on their hard disks. But I think the truth is that I have trouble throwing away an old friend…especially one who served me so well.

Here's one of my favorite Monty Python bits. I seem to be the only person on this planet who remembers that once — a long time ago, before most of America knew of Python — this video was used on The Dean Martin Show. As I recall it — and it's been a long time — Dean introduced it on-camera and then the video played with his voice replacing John Cleese's.

Martin's producer Greg Garrison worked a number of deals with British television, some of them involving Marty Feldman and using BBC video of him on American television programs. This bit was funnier with Cleese than it was with Dino…

Once upon a time, the Republican Party branded a man named Al Gore a "congenital liar" and therefore unfit to be President because he claimed that the main characters in the book Love Story were based on himself and his wife. And it didn't matter one bit that the truth was that (a) Gore hadn't claimed that; he'd claimed correctly that some reporters had said that and (b) the author Erich Segal said that the characters were partially based on the Gores. Today, many who call themselves Republicans are perfectly satisfied with a Chief Exec who claims that…

• Babies are given 82 vaccines in a single shot, the doses are the size of two glasses of water, Amish people don't need vaccines and other false "facts" about vaccinations.
• Every single "Venezuelan drug boat" that he bombs would have killed 25,000 Americans.
• He's settled seven wars — or eight if you count the Gaza one which seems far from being actually settled.
• "We're going to be reducing the costs of medicines by 100%, 200, 300, 500% and even more than that."
• The Big, Beautiful Bill he signed into law earlier this year ensures no tax on Social Security.
• Joe Biden never ever said the U.S. had the strongest military in the world, tried to get rid of "Space Force" and gave $350 billion in aid to Ukraine.
• He [Trump] raised what member nations contribute to support NATO,
• 25 million migrants entered the country under Biden.
• He [Trump] authored a book in 2000 that predicted what Osama Bin Laden was going to do.

…and many more. Above fact checks can be found here, here and here.