Monday MADness: The New MAD

Well, the new MAD era has begun in earnest. MAD #12 appeared in comic book shops last week. This issue is the first with the full-blown “mostly classic content with some new content” mix we’ve been told was coming. What we see is probably pretty indicative of what we can expect going forward… themed issues with about 20% new material, and 80% classic content with some colorizing here and there.

What is reader reaction? Outrage? Sounding the death knell? Mass revolt that MAD is no longer focused on skewering the current world around us and instead is focused mostly on nostalgia/the past?

Almost none of the above would be my guess. I got this comment on my MAD #12 contents post the other day that I think is a pretty good representation of many current MAD reader’s opinions:

I feel guilty saying this but I really enjoyed the reprint selection. I’ve never seen the first Lighter Side and some nice Al Jaffe, Wood, and Davis I don’t think have been reprinted before.

My response was “What fan of MAD, cartooning, and humor would NOT enjoy seeing the classic work of these legends in print again? No need to feel guilty!”

As much as it pains me to say this, DC is not being stupid about this move. They are being pragmatic. If you separate emotion from the equation and look at it from a completely corporate/business standpoint, this is probably what their analysis was:

• Despite efforts MAD is not reaching new generations of readers
• MAD‘s current audience is firmly invested in the past glories and heights of the magazine, not in fresh, new content
• MAD‘s current readers like new content that reminds them of the golden years more than stuff that has a more 21st century voice*
• MAD is (was) expensive to produce and was not profitable at current sales levels given the enormous overhead at the corporate level
• The current business model in the comics world these days is to use the printed product as a sort of loss-leader while taking the intellectual property (IP) it creates and peddling it in much more lucrative endeavors such as films, TV, and retail merchandise. Actually this has been the business model for a long time now. MAD has little to no IP that works with that model. Spy vs. Spy and maybe to a lesser extent Alfred E. Neuman are IP that have some licensing potential, but not much compared to Batman, etc.

*If you need any proof of this, what was the most talked about issue of MAD last year? Arguably it was MAD #9, the “Time Warp” issue that featured the “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” 60’s era cover and the retro first dozen or so pages. Readers raved about that one, and it was all about nostalgia.

Trying to gain a new audience has not worked for a long while now. MAD‘s circulation did rise a bit when it switched to Burbank but I’m guessing not enough to maintain the high costs of producing the magazine with almost no IP licensing revenues coming in. I’m not privy to the numbers associated with production and printing, but paying for creator content, the salaries of a full staff, the costs of printing and distribution, etc., it can’t be cheap. With almost no IP to generate revenues, MAD‘s only source of incoming money was sales of the actual publication, something almost no comic book in today’s market can survive on. I think (and this is only my own speculation) DC decided rather than kill MAD completely, they would give up on trying to get new readers and instead concentrate on playing to their current readership’s tastes… that being “nostalgia” with classic content that would allow them to reduce the costs of producing the magazine substantially.

It makes economic sense. First, from the start Bill Gaines required all MAD work be done under a work-for-hire agreement. Therefore DC owns the complete copyright to virtually all MAD content ever produced (with a very few exceptions), and can reprint it with no royalties to the creators. Second, that nearly 70 years of free content was created by some of the greatest artists and writers who ever worked in the comics industry… and that is really an understatement. So, they are not reprinting just any old stuff… this is work that defined satire and humor for multiple generations. Finally, since all signs indicate the majority of current readership like the old stuff better than the new stuff, they probably expect not much drop off in readership. Sales will likely continue at or near current levels, but with a product that is 80% cheaper to produce content-wise and can be put together by an office crew a fraction of the size and cost of previous years. Add to that the elimination of the cost waste of newsstand distribution (not looking for new readers remember. I suspect newsstand sales stopped being a significant source of casual/new/spontaneous readers a long time ago. Current readers will seek it out in comic shops or subscribe) and MAD is now significantly cheaper to produce and distribute, with what they think will be about the same level of readership. Revenue constant, expenses drastically reduced.

Of course, the problem with that strategy is it has a short shelf life. By not trying to reach a new, regenerating audience they are catering almost exclusively to a current audience that will eventually age out. Without new readers MAD will pass away with their static readership. Maybe that was something that was inevitable. A lot of people thought the material in MAD in the last 10 years was some of its sharpest stuff since the heyday of the 60s-70s, yet again this was mostly current readers saying this as there was no corresponding increase in new readership.

Personally I think there is room in this very messed up world for a publication like MAD with all new content, but probably not under a giant corporate umbrella like Time-Warner. When you have to face shareholders nothing much matters except dollars and cents on a very grand scale. A smaller publisher that can operate on a much less expensive plane could probably keep a publication like MAD in the black for as long as they wanted, but the value of the back catalog of work is too great for WB to sell the magazine, and licensing it out would just create additional overhead for the smaller publisher than might push that black into the red. I don’t see MAD leaving the DC fold in any other way than them stopping publication.

The good news is there is still some new content in MAD. The reprinted work is cartooning legend, and anything you’ve never seen before is new to you, right? Some work is being respectfully colorized which is kind of cool if done right. The stuff between the covers is definitely worth reading, new and old. Maybe MAD can chug along like this for a long time.

Of course, with the news that DC Comics VP co-publisher Dan DiDio was fired on Friday, your guess is as good as mine as to how current plans for MAD are going to change. I’m told by the MAD staffers (the ones still standing anyway) that they are told it will be “business as usual”. I’m sure that will be the case, until it isn’t… with no warning.

What, me worry?