MAD Myth Busting!

This should come as no surprise, but a lot of people on the internet say things in comments and discussions that range from fairly inaccurate to completely untrue, and yet attempt to sound like they know what they are talking about by throwing out complete conjecture as fact. I read a lot of stuff people say about MAD, usually centered around the reason for its current state, that is ridiculously untrue. Here’s some fact checking/myth busting about MAD Magazine:

Claim: MAD stopped publishing years ago/last year/recently.

Verdict: FALSE

MAD never stopped publishing, and in fact comes out bi-monthly as of this writing, December 2020. It did, however, cease news stand distribution as of MAD #9 in the late summer of 2019, making subscriptions and direct market (i.e. comic book stores) the only places you could buy a printed copy. A friend pointed out to me that a few statements from the publisher and from some contributors made at the time MAD left newsstands were not very clear, and I can see where the impression that is stopped completely came from.

Starting with issue #11, MAD began running increasingly large amounts of reprinted material instead of new content. #11 featured a new “MAD 20 Dumbest People, Events, and Things” and other new articles, but had a significant number of pages of reprinted stuff. #12 had more, and subsequent issues ended up containing approximately 20% new content and the rest classic reprinted material. Starting with issue #16, MAD is essentially 100% reprinted content, with only new covers and the occasional new piece.

Now, if you want to make the “for all intents and purposes” argument that as MAD is now almost 100% reprinted material that the magazine is essentially dead, that’s a horse of a different color. The fact is there is still a magazine published bi-monthly that says “MAD” on the cover. Who knows for how much longer, but as of today it’s still publishing.

Claim: MAD switched to a magazine to avoid the Comics Code Authority.

Verdict: FALSE

This is a common inaccuracy. MAD did not become a magazine in response to the Comics Code Authority (CCA), which was a self-inflicted censorship program the comic book industry instigated in response to the 1954 senate hearings over juvenile delinquency and violence/horror in comics and to avoid possible government censorship. MAD publisher Bill Gaines changed MAD to a magazine AKA a “slick” to prevent editor Harvey Kurtzman from leaving MAD to take a job with the prestigious Pageant magazine as editor Harris Shevelson‘s right-hand man. With that job offer in his back pocket, Harvey went to Gaines to say he was going to leave. Harvey never much liked working on comics, which he considered a low-brow, kids medium. He had been lobbying Gaines for years to make MAD a “slick”, and Gaines refused due to the expense. However Gaines found out about the Pageant offer, and he recognized that without Harvey MAD was likely done. MAD was one of the last successful books he had after his E.C. crime, sci-fi and horror titles were unable to get approved by the CCA and no store would carry them (Gaines did try and publish some comics that did get CCA approval, but they didn’t sell very well). So he offered to do what Kurtzman had previously wanted… change MAD into a “slick” and keep Harvey onboard. It was blind coincidence (and good fortune) that the move also avoided the new Comics Code Authority entanglements, so it was a win-win. The real reason behind the move was to make Harvey Kurtzman happy and keep him with E.C. and MAD.

Claim: The magazine tanked after Bill Gaines died and the magazine stopped being funny.

Verdict: FALSE

Many people seem to want to blame “changing or declining content quality” for why MAD has struggled, and that is often tied in to the passing of Bill Gaines. Of course it’s a matter of personal opinion if one thinks MAD‘s content declined at any point in its history, but it’s ridiculous to think a decline in quality of content was ever a main reason for its fall in sales. MAD peaked in circulation in 1974 at 2,132,655 copies. In 1992 when Bill passed, circulation was at 503,756… a drop of over 1.6 million and 76% in readership over that 18 year period… by far the biggest decline in the magazine’s history. That precipitous decline all took place under Bill’s watch while the Usual Gang of Idiots were largely intact and at still the height of their powers. In fact, the magazine went mostly unchanged all during that period, same writers, same artists, same editors and staff, yet sales crashed hard.

MAD’s main problem has never been content. If you no longer found the magazine funny, perhaps it was because you were no longer 13-18 years old. MAD’s problem has been that it’s a magazine, and magazines have been on the decline for decades. Playboy used to sell 5.7 million copies an issue. Its last published circulation figure was 206,483 in 2018. Today its circulation is 0, the same circulation number as LIFE, Glamour, ESPN, Seventeen, JET, Family Circle, Ladie’s Home Journal, etc. etc. some of which used to sell in the millions of copies and had been around for 100 years. No magazines are doing so well these days, and I doubt they all experienced a “decline in quality” of their content that caused this.

Claim: After Bill Gaines died they brought in a bunch of young people to make the magazine “hip” and that killed it.

Verdict: FALSE

Bill Gaines died in June of 1992, and the last issue produced when he was still alive was #311, June 1992. The main staff at that time were- Editors: Nick Meglin, John Ficarra; Associate Editors: Charlie Kadau, Joe Raiola; Art Director: Lenny Brenner. Eleven years after Bill’s death in issue #430, June 2003, the main staff were: Editors: Nick Meglin, John Ficarra; Senior Editors: Charlie Kadau, Joe Raiola; Art Director: Sam Viviano. Sam was a longtime artist for the magazine before taking the art director job when Lenny retired, and was a spry 50 years old at the time. There were younger production artists and associate editors and art directors onboard, and Nick Meglin retired in 2004, but basically up until the magazine left NYC to go to Burbank in 2018, the main editorial/art staff were the same as they were at the end of the Gaines era.

It’s true they tried some things to update the magazine. They italicized the logo and did some throwback border art for a while in the late 90’s. They switched to color and an upgraded paper stock in 2001. They added some new features like “The Fundalini Pages” and “The Strip Club”, but these were all done under the auspices of largely the same staff that was in charge under Bill Gaines, until the move to Burbank in 2018.

Claim: MAD never took ads until they started doing it in 2001. Bill Gaines was always against it for philosophical reasons.

Verdict: FALSE

When MAD was a comic book it had plenty of ads, like all comic books had. MAD also ran a few ads in its first two years as a magazine, which they labeled “real advertisement” to differentiate the actual ads from the ad parodies. The last real advertisement that ran in MAD prior to issue #403 was for “Famous Artists School” on the inside back cover of issue #32, April 1957. Gaines was against ads in the magazine, but only partly for philosophical reasons. Gaines was quoted in an interview on 60 Minutes that he felt MAD could not take ads because they wouldn’t be able to then poke fun at other companies or other ad campaigns: “We long ago decided we couldn’t take money from Pepsi-Cola and make fun of Coca-Cola.” However his main reason for being against ads was far more economically based. Gaines thought the small amount of revenue they generated was not worth the time, trouble, and extra expense of dealing with advertisers, who expected higher production values for the publication that would have negated much of the ad revenues. Also, MAD readers were having trouble differentiating between real ads and fake ads in the magazine despite the “real advertisement” disclaimer.

Claim: Bill Gaines is rolling over in his grave because of (take your pick: MAD accepting ads, not being funny, being in color, etc).

Verdict: FALSE

Impossible. Bill was cremated.

Claim: MAD died out because all they do is make fun of Trump, and people stopped buying it.

Verdict: FALSE

I hear this one all the time from right wingers, and it’s easy to debunk. Simple math, although no doubt Trump supporters will just dismiss the facts as “fake news.”

MAD’s slow decline started in the late 1970’s and bottomed out in 2015 with a circulation of 122,908. In fact, circulation declined from 150,829 in 2009, to that previously mentioned 122,908 figure in 2015 (with some ups and downs along the way) while Barack Obama was in office and MAD was busy making fun of him, not Trump. Circulation rose to 133,924 in 2016 when Trump came on the political scene (and into regular ridiculing in MAD… he was on two covers in 2016), and by 2019 it was up to 150,525. In fact circulation rose every year from 2016 to 2019 (2020 numbers not out yet). That means MORE people started buying it during the Trump administration, not less. In fact, MAD editor John Ficarra has said in several interviews that sales of the magazine nearly doubled whenever they put Trump on the cover, which is why he was on so many covers.

I have a feeling that circulation in 2020 is going to take a big dive, because it was in Aug of 2019 that MAD announced it was going to a mostly reprint format and I’m sure a lot of readers didn’t renew their subscriptions knowing they were paying for recycled content. But, that would have nothing to do with any anti-Trump content since the reprint stuff is all ancient history and therefore has nothing to do with Trump. Maybe all the conservatives are upset about the constant Spiro Agnew bashing going on in MAD these days!