Monday MADness Interlude: New Editor!

We interrupt our chronological slog through my work at MAD because it was at this moment in our timeline, June of 2017, that we finally learned who would be the new editor of MAD once it moved out to Burbank a mere 6 months later from that point.

Back in March of that year it had been announced that MAD was finally following the rest of DC Comics from NYC out to Burbank, but since that announcement took place there was no word on who would be the new editor nor who would be on staff. I knew that no one from the NYC staff was going to make the move, but who would be taking over was a total mystery.

I happened to be in Orlando at one of the Disney parks with the family when I got a call from MAD‘s VP of Editorial/Head Idiot John Ficarra, who told me he had the new editor of MAD on the line. This voice said hello to me and sounded very familiar but I could not place it (being in the middle of EPCOT did not help). It was Bill Morrison, whom I knew very well from the National Cartoonists Society. He was the first vice president on my board when I was president of the NCS, and was then the current NCS president.

I was encouraged by this. Up until that moment I was very concerned about the direction of MAD once it went to the west coast. MAD had always had a natural progression of editors and art directors. New staffers worked under the old guard until they took over and eventually became the old guard themselves. Nick Meglin had been a constant presence and guiding force since almost the beginning through his retirement in 2004. Senior editors like Charlie Kadau and Joe Raiola had started as editorial assistants and worked with Nick and John, and were now working with newer staff.  Sam Viviano had been freelancing with MAD for about 20 years and worked with John Putman and Lenny “The Beard” Brenner among others before taking over as Art Director. There had always been a “through thread” with staff dating back to the Bill Gaines/Harvey Kurtzman era, where institutional wisdom had been passed down and that kept MAD‘s “voice” intact. Since no one from the NYC staff was going to make the move, that thread was now going to be severed.

I thought Bill was a terrific choice. He had a long list of credits in both comics and animation, not only helming the Simpsons comic book line Bongo for many years but also writing and drawing his own comic Roswell, as well as working as a director on Futurama and as an illustrator for Disney, The Simpsons and many other clients. I was confident that he understood what MAD was all about. He knew humor and satire, and had run an entire comics publishing company. I thought Bill was sure to both serve the tradition of classic MAD features like “A MAD Look at”, the movie and TV parodies and the like while bringing in some new ideas and new directions. Most importantly, I thought he’d preserve the MAD voice and attitude.

In hindsight Bill lived up to all that, but he was never really given a chance to succeed. Within a year and despite the circulation of MAD actually going UP for the first time in decades, the suits at DC/WB/AT&T/Whomeverownedthematthetime decimated DC Comics by firing a large portion of the creative staff including Bill and most of the MAD staff, cut the Vertigo line and reduced MAD to a mostly reprint and then all reprint publication.

No one foresaw all that at the time, of course. I was still sad that MAD was leaving New York and I’d no longer be working with John, Sam, Ryan, Joe, Charlie and the rest of the MAD crew, but I was excited about working with Bill. It’s a shame that was so short lived.

Toon in next week when we get back to our usual, boring looks back at my work for the magazine as we near the last of the NYC issues!