A MAD History Lesson…

Mental Floss posted this video about the history of MAD magazine a couple weeks ago. I’ve been meaning to link to it but I keep forgetting. Today I remembered.

While it’s only 15 minutes, the video does a pretty good job of covering the origins of MAD. They are also more accurate about the details than many longer stories from bigger sources. Certainly they deserve kudos for getting the history right concerning MAD’s switch to a magazine format. So many other media stories about MAD assumes they switched to avoid the Comics Code Authority because it happened around the same time, when that was just a coincidence. As the video correctly states, Bill Gaines allowed Harvey Kurtzman to switch MAD from a comic to a magazine because Kurtzman was going to quit if Gaines didn’t let him do that. Kurtzman didn’t think much of comic books, which he considered throw away, low end kids stuff. He wanted to work on a “slick”, meaning a glossy, higher end magazine. When Harvey was quietly offered a position as right hand man to the editor of the prestigious Pageant magazine, he told Bill he was going to leave E.C. unless Bill made MAD into a “slick”. Somehow Bill found out about the Pageant job offer, so he knew Harvey was serious. Bill relented and MAD became a magazine, and the rest is history.

Bizarrely, the majority of the video is just a lady talking on the screen. You’d think they would use more images from the magazine, but maybe they didn’t want to risk any legal issues from DC. Not sure why they’d need to worry about it, this seems a clear “fair use” case. Maybe they are just lazy. The mention Fred Astaire’s Alfred E. Neuman dance routine, but don’t even show a still photo of him in the mask.

That doesn’t make the video any less informative. It’s worth a watch.