Happy Birthday MadCoverSite!

Today is the 24th anniversary of the start of MadCoverSite.com, an incredible resource for all fans and aficionados of MAD Magazine.

The MADCoverSite is the tireless effort of one person, MAD Superfan Doug Gilford. Doug started it on Aug 17th, 1997 as part of the late Dick Hanchette‘s Collectmad.com website. It began as a collection of scans of the all the covers of MAD through the years, along with a list of each issues highlights (or lowlights depending on your perspective). Doug began adding lists of all the movie and TV parodies that had appeared, in alphabetical order with the real movie or show title and the issue in which it appeared. Over the years it expanded, including the full contents of each issue and higher resolution scans of covers, special issue covers and contents, MAD book lists and a lot more. It also contains a MAD contributor database, where you could look up any major writer or artist and find a list of the features they worked on, which issue it appeared in and which collaborator (if any) they worked with. His latest project is a complete listing of all Sergio Aragonés’ “marginal” cartoons… all 10,000 or so of them!! I often use it to check and see the title of something I worked on or who was the writer on that particular piece. I have my own personal list of such info, but visiting Doug’s site was always a joy and I found myself clicking links to see the credits of writers I’d worked with and remembering pieces I’d read in MAD years ago. Visit yourself to enjoy the idiocy.

MADCoverSite is beloved of all the UGOI as well as both casual and serious fans and scholars of MAD. It’s a labor of love, and Doug deserves the thanks and praise of MAD contributors and fans of all ages and places for his incredible efforts. Of course, you can always show your appreciation in a more usable form here.

So, thanks for 24 years of MADness, Doug. Looks like you can go into semi-retirement considering cataloging new work in MAD is not exactly a full time job these days.