MAD Goes Digital!

A couple of months ago I mentioned that MAD was now requiring me to do all my artwork for the magazine sans word boxes, but I couldn’t tell you why just yet.

Well, the cat’s out of the bag.

Today DC Entertainment and MAD Magazine announced the planned release of a new MAD Magazine iPad app complete with interactive features and exclusive content. The app is scheduled to be released on April Fool’s Day (Alfred E. Neuman’s birthday, no less), and will be free to download through the iTunes App Store. The MAD app will include a mixture of free and paid content, including a free preview of the magazine:

 From DC Entertainment:

“We’re delighted to bring MAD to the iPad,” said MAD Editor John Ficarra. “We think the MAD app may be just the thing to turn the struggling iPad around and make it successful –though most experts think it may be just the thing that kills it altogether.”

The MAD app will include interactive versions of all current issues, access to a library of back issues and books, animated covers and “fold-in” pages, promo videos from the hit Cartoon Network show, MAD, and a link to MAD‘s popular blog The Idiotical. In addition to the regular issue interactive “fold-in,” digital issues will also include a second, classic interactive “fold-in” from a past issue. Fans of Sergio Aragones’ MAD Marginals will enjoy a feature that allows readers to “pop-up” the margin artwork for a larger, more detailed view.

While the app will mirror all editorial components in print issues, many digital versions will include interactive elements. For example, the digital version of the current issue’s “MAD‘s Make Your Own Twilight Movie” lets readers create multiple storylines and highlights their choices as they make them for a ridiculous visual punch line.

The app itself is free, and with it you can purchase new digital issues of MAD Magazine for $4.99, or back issues for $1.99. Digital readers can also choose a per issue digital subscription for $1.99 per issue, or pay an upfront annual fee of $9.99. All future print issues of the magazine will be available for purchase day-and-date within the app. Here’s the best part:

Current print subscribers will receive a free digital subscription.

I’ve been saying all along that print publications need to move into the digital age using a similar newsstand/subscription model: charging a higher per-issue price but a cheaper subscription price, AND give anyone with a print subscription a free digital subscription to both transition print folks to digital AND to encourage digital subscribers to go ahead and get the print edition as well.

This is terrific news, and another example of MAD‘s efforts to connect to the next generation of fans, much like their very successful animated show on the Cartoon Network, which just announced they are returning for a third season. I’m looking forward to seeing my work on the iPad. I am still not entirely clear on why they wanted me to do “full art” and stop inking in, and thus drawing and coloring around, the word boxes. I was told it has something to do with the way the word boxes/balloons will appear on the pages…some kind of animation where there is a second that the art has no word balloons. We shall see on April 1st!