MADness #2: The Untold History of MAD!

Each Monday I’m doing an installment of a complete, chronological look at every job I did for MAD over my 20 year run for the magazine, complete with whatever stories, anecdotes or milestones might apply and the full article. This week is a look at my second appearance in the magazine, in a feature called “The Untold History of MAD Magazine”, written by my CLAPTRAP co-hort, Desmond Devlin for MAD #400, December 2000.

MAD #400 was obviously a major milestone for the magazine. The issue was packed with special stuff, including a feature called “What Drives You MAD?” which contained actual responses to that question from famous folks like Adam Carolla & Jimmy Kimmel, Winona Ryder, Greg Grunberg, Kevin Smith, Jason Alexander and a bunch more, with art by John Kascht.

One thing about MAD #400 that was a milestone but no one knew it at the time was that it was the first issue in color on a new, upgraded paper stock. Most readers probably assumed MAD did this special issue on much nicer paper and with a lot of color because it was #400, but actually they never went back to the old paper or to full black and white contents.

I was one of several artists who contributed to “The Untold History of MAD Magazine” feature, which was a gag timeline of MAD‘s history. Drew Friedman did most of the heavy lifting with a lot of spot illustrations, Al Jaffee did a fake fold-in, Angelo Torres did a couple of spots, Sergio Aragonés did a spot of a young Sergio and MAD staff, and Paul Coker did a spot about Frank Jacobs. Scott Bircher and I did a series of fake MAD covers that were passed off as historical ones.

Here’s the entire artcie:

Here’s a closer look at my small fake covers:

Those last two were supposed to be alternate covers ala MAD #305’s real double cover for the 1960 Nixon/Kennedy post election issue, but this time concerning Boris Yelsin‘s 1991 attempted Russian coup.

Ironically, my next MAD assignment in #401 actually DID end up being one of these “pick which one won” double pieces. Tune in next Monday for that story and art!