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MAD No. 1 (June 2018). After a very promising IT’S A WRAP?
start, it was announced on February 4, 2019, that Despite all the changes, MAD has been
editor Morrison had been unceremoniously let go. published continuously for nearly 70 years. For
Several months later, nearly all of the remaining millions of people, the world would not be the
staff was also released. same if their minds hadn’t been rotted by MAD,
MAD will continue, but consist primarily of in either its comic book or magazine incarnation.
reprints, and be sold only in comic shops and Kurtzman’s MAD, for example, planted the seeds
via subscription. This is a decidedly unfunny fate of anarchy in such future sixties underground
for the publication that influenced so many comix cartoonists as Robert Crumb, Gilbert
generations of readers. Shelton, Bill Griffith, and Rick Griffin, as well as
in future Monty Python member/visionary film
director Terry Gilliam. The Feldstein-edited
version of MAD (and the later incarnations
edited by Meglin and Ficarra) had an equally
profound affect upon its readership as an indis-
pensable rite of passage, a kind of primer into the
ways of the world, even if satirically skewed by
MAD’s “fun house mirror.”
In 2017, MAD moved to Burbank, California It’s hard to say what the future holds for
and prepared to start over with: MAD, along with many publications that are
- a new first issue, actually printed on paper. But for those of us
- a new staff (along with more familiar who grew up loving MAD, it’s hard to imagine a
MAD-men Sergio Aragonés and Al Jaffee), and world without it.
- a new editor, Bill Morrison.
Pictured above is the cover of the new MAD No. 1 Long live the -ness!
(illustrated by Jason Edmiston, June 2018), signed
One of the most popular features in MAD was the movie and TV

parodies, usually illustrated by Mort Drucker who could produce by many of the contributors. Guitarist/composer Grant Geissman has written several
spot-on caricatures of virtually any celebrity. Many stars stated they After a promising start, most of the staff was let go Eisner Award-nominated books about MAD and EC
knew they had arrived when they were caricatured by Drucker in and it was announced that MAD would from Comics, the most recent being The History of EC
MAD. Pictured are the opening pages from “The Oddfather,” then on consist primarily of reprints, and be sold Comics, published by Taschen. He was nominated in
written by Larry Siegel (from MAD No. 155, December 1972) only in comic shops and via subscription. 2004 for an Emmy Award for co-writing the theme to the
CBS TV series Two and a Half Men.

Longtime contributor Sergio Aragonés came to the magazine in 1963, and besides contributing his “MAD Marginals” (tiny, but very clever, drawings
placed in the margins of the magazine), the incredibly prolific Aragonés also wrote and/or drew numerous features and cover ideas for the magazine.
He only recently retired from doing work for MAD, missing appearing in only one issue since 1963 because of a mail snafu. Pictured below is
“I Remember, I Remember, The Wondrous Woodstock Music Fair,” illustrated by Aragonés and written by Frank Jacobs (from MAD No. 134, April 1970)

20 Journal of Antiques and Collectibles