The End of the MADness
Yesterday contributors to MAD Magazine officially got the news that, after 67 years of continuous publication that began with Harvey Kurtzman‘s brilliant comic book and eventually evolved into the magazine that forever changed the world of satire and humor, MAD will stop publishing all new content after issue #10 in October. The magazine will continue with classic reprint material and SOME new content under new cover art but will only be sold via the direct market and current subscriptions. News stand distribution will cease. Subscriptions are still being solicted and will continue with the new reprint/new stuff mix. DC will continue to publish books and special collections under the MAD brand. Of course we all knew this was coming. Last week DC laid off one art director and three of the four two of the three* remaining editors. Not too many magazines can keep publishing regularly without any staff.
I could go on and on about the end of an era and a true American original, about how MAD had an incalculable influence on satire, comedy in general, and the humor of the entire planet, how its pages regularly featured some of the greatest cartoonists who ever lived like Kurtzman, Jack Davis, Mort Drucker, Wally Wood, Will Elder, Al Jaffee, Sergio Aragones, Don Martin, Paul Coker… too many to list really. I could go on and on but all that is meaningless with respect to today. None of that history can be taken away, and none of it is a reason for the next issue to come out. In the end in this day and age, the only reason anything is allowed to exist comes down to money. If something is profitable, it continues. If it is not, it ends.
A MAD with new, original content is ending for the same reason anything ends… it’s all about the Benjamins.
The signs have been on the wall for a long time now. They really started with Bill Gaines‘ passing in 1992. *In the early 60’s, Gaines sold the magazine to a company called Premier Industries that specialized in making venetian blinds but as part of the deal he was given total autonomy to publish the magazine as he saw fit. In other words the corporate overlords had to keep their hands off. Eventually, Premier sold it to the magazine’s distributor, Independent News Co., which was a part of DC Comics, which was later acquired by Kinney National Services, which in turn grew in the Time-Warner behemoth. The “hands off” part of the agreement slowly but surely went away. Once Bill died, the slow but unstoppable taking over by the suits began. In the mid-90s the MADison Avenue offices were closed and the staff moved into the DC comics headquarters… the first overt sign of cost cutting. Editors Nick Meglin and John Ficarra were still allowed to keep MAD “MAD“, but the continued slide of circulation started the pressure mounting to increase revenues. There was a time in the 90’s when some DC brass were mulling over rebranding MAD as some kind of teenage-orientated pop culture hip-hop publication but cooler heads prevailed and they settled for a visual “revamp” which included the italicized logo. Sales continued to decline. In 2001 MAD switched to a color format with issue #403, and started taking advertising, all of course in an effort to increase sales and revenues. In 2004, longtime editor and unsung hero of MAD‘s “voice” Nick Meglin “retired”, cutting DC’s staff costs further. I’d say I’m glad Nick did not live to see this day, but nothing could ever happen in this universe to make me happy Nick has passed.
It was in early 2009 that the writing was really on the wall. As of issue #500, MAD went from monthly publication to quarterly. Clearly DC was now looking at MAD‘s bottom line with an executioner’s eye. That only lasted for about a year, when MAD increased to bi-monthly in 2010. However one thing that many people do not know is that MAD‘s page rate for contributors was cut nearly in half at that same time.
In 2013 DC packed up its New York offices and moved the whole operation to Burbank to the Warner Bros complex (so you see it wasn’t just MAD that WB was looking to cut expenses with). In typical MAD fashion none of the MAD staff, all life-long New Yorkers, were willing to move. So, DC was faced with either cancelling the title, moving it anyway with no one to run it, or keep MAD in NYC. To their credit they did the latter, and for 4 years MAD kept on publishing in slowly shrinking new office space.
In 2017 DC finally pulled the trigger on a move out to Burbank for MAD. The new West Coast MAD made it 10 issues as an original content publication.
Despite all the signs, I actually had a lot of optimism that the new MAD had a chance. First, their choice of hiring Bill Morrison as Executive Editor/VP was inspired. Bill was a guy who knew humor, who had a deep affinity and knowledge of what made MAD “MAD”, was very smart, saavy, and plugged in to the greater world of comedy, had editorial experience as the head of Bongo Comics for over a decade, and was a terrific artist in his own right. He put together a young and hip staff of editors and I thought really took MAD into the 21st century, especially with social media.
Then they fired him in January of this year. We all knew it was over then… just a matter of time for the rest of it to catch up.
What’s sad is that MAD was actually having a mini-creative renaissance under Bill. Their cover for issue #4 won a Rondo Hatton award for horror genre art. The feature ‘The Ghasilygun Tinies” in that same issue, written by Matt Cohen and drawn by Marc Palm, received a major amount of national attention and is nominated for an Eisner Award. The magazine itself is nominated for an Eisner for best Humor Publication this year. Several high profile comedians contributed articles for the magazine. But critical success is meaningless. The bottom line is all that matters. Ironically circulation has increased but obviously not to the point that the numbers worked.
Then they fired Bill. Did I already say that? It bears repeating.
Some people are speculating that maybe DC will sell MAD to another company that would keep it going. That is not going to happen. One of the few bad things about working for MAD is that over its entire existence, with just a very few exceptions, every piece of writing and art published in the magazine was done as “work for hire”, meaning E.C. Comics ( and thus DC/Warner) owns the copyrights to that work. That’s 67 years of content by some of the greatest comics artists ever, and some of the most influential pieces of published humor ever printed. That’s an extremely valuable catalog for reprints, collections, etc. that costs the owners of that content nothing. No way DC sells that. At best they could possibly license out the MAD brand for another publisher to publish some version of the magazine, but if a printed version was financially viable none of this would be happening.
Despite what some people will say, MAD was not suffering from poor content. Not everything the Burbank crew threw at the wall stuck, but MAD still had a lot of sharp content and was virtually the last place for such visual comic humor to be seen in a single publication. MAD was still MAD, especially when it was still in NYC, but apparently not enough people were buying it to offset the increasing costs of publishing/distributing. Thus, it’s ending. DC has almost 70 years of cost-free content to milk, why would they need to spend money on producing new stuff?
It’s been a real privilege for me to have been a small part of what was hands-down THE greatest comics/cartoon publication in history. I was lucky to have gotten started with MAD back in 2000, when Nick and John were still in charge and MAD was arguably still the Gaines era MAD. I saw my work published alongside some of my cartooning heroes like Mort, Al, Sergio, Paul, Angelo Torres, Sam Viviano, and many others, and I got to work with writers like Dick DeBartolo, Arnie Kogen, Desmond Devlin and other incredibly funny and talented people. More than that, I was able to call these people both colleagues and friends.
So. What’s next for me? I did the art for two parodies in issue number nine, plus I did the cover (kind of a special circumstance, which is a long story I’ll share when the issue comes out). I’ve got at least one feature to draw for issue ten, possibly two. Then it’s on to new adventures in the world of cartooning and comics. On the bright side, no matter what I work on next I can virtually guarantee the ratio of time and effort spent vs. the amount of actual pay for the job will be better balanced. MAD was much more a labor of love than it was for the paycheck.
I will say… it’s hard to be one of the ones that has to turn out the lights.
Thanks for the many years of laughs, MAD.
*CORRECTION: Actually there were only three remaining editors and two were laid off , the third quit of her own accord a few weeks earlier to pursue work writing on a TV show. Apologies.
** CORRECTION 2: I removed any rhetoric that seemed to say MAD was completely done. It’s just done published full issues of NEW content.
*** CORRECTION #3: Comics historian and writer extraordinare Mark Evanier had some deeper information on the details of Gaines selling of MAD, and the timeline of how it ended up part of Time Warner. Thanks Mark!
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Noooo.. Has everyone gone MAD?
Sorry Tom. You were one of a very few intellects and talents that found a place in the firmament you admired add you grew. Your contributions to Mad and subsequently new generations of artists are significant. The good thing here is that you have the great and ability top continue. I sincerely look forward to the ongoing journey. I am ever proud of what you have done, accomplished, provided, and most of all excited to see where you are going. SF
Sad…Very sad…
I grew up reading MAD, it, as much as anything, drove me to want to do humorous illustration.
While I understand the commercial desires, it’s still a sad end. Particularly since there are ways to monetize the digital content.
Anyway, Tom, I’ll be on the lookout for your art and inspiration!
They broke my heart. They have no idea what they’ve done. I am honored and privileged to have met you Tom. I will continue taking your classes and encourage fellow artist to do the same. Please get your 2nd book out as soon as you can.
Sorry to see the end of an era. I expect you to go on to bigger and better things because of your talent and creativity.
So what’s going to happen to the website? You could do what Cracked did and go all digital although, let’s face it, the Cracked website resembles the magazine in name only and doesn’t even feature original artwork.
Part of me just refuses to believe this is truly the end and that MAD won’t have a comeback down the road like Newsweek did. Although it’s true that everything ends eventually, the magazine is just way too iconic to go out like this.
Regardless of what happens, this news is absolutely devastating. I first discovered MAD 20 years ago in 1999 when I was 13 years old and it blew my mind. As a child, I was initially drawn to its silly imagery like a nervous, sweating Pikachu in a straitjacket. As I got older, I appreciated it for its extremely sharp and often scathing political satire and social commentary. MAD taught me to always look at the rich and famous with a cynical eye and to not take life too seriously and laugh at it. And for that, I will always be grateful to it.
And MAD will never truly die even if this is truly the end for the magazine itself. Its influence will live on in hundreds of cartoonists and humorists that were inspired by it.
Beautifully written piece, Tom. I’m sorry to see it go. Like millions of others, MAD was a huge part of my childhood too. Generation after generation of adolescents had a certain bell rung in their brains at some point because of the specific bent sense of humor in MAD. The personality of the magazine had not changed but the kids did. After all of those years, the new generation didn’t respond. Who knows what to make of this shift in the minds of the young readers, but the end of this institution says more about them than it does about MAD’s ability to hang on. What will these MADless minds do with our future?
What? Me worry.
I look forward to seeing your next venture, Tom.
And thanks for all the brilliance of your work in MAD.
– Justin Thompson
Profound sadness.
I’m still in a bit of shock. I will miss seeing your great talent in MAD every two months, Tom. And thanks for this excellent summary of events. I will definitely share.
Didn’t really want to believe it until I heard it from you, Tom. Such a shame it comes down to the $… it seems a lot of corporate cost-cutting has been happening at DC recently, to its detriment. I was really enjoying the newest incarnation of the magazine, and, more importantly, my son was even getting into it. Hopefully something else will rise from the ashes, and your top-notch work will continue on another regular platform, but in the meantime this is a sad day.
Boy, does this suck!! And I was just about to renew my subscription… AARGH!!
Sounds like it got mismanaged by corporate badly and it stopped being fresh, treating its staff right, and moved away from its demographic. They just wouldnt let Alfred P Neuman grow up with the rest of the world.
I dont see an end; I see an opportunity. Corporate is going to spin in circles playing the broken record of the past, while the real opportunity is still out there.
I say Mr. Richmond phones up Bill and assembles a cabal of artists/ humorists, and spearheads the birth of the next incarnation of MAD.
Dare I suggest it christened HATTER?
It will be sad to see the magazine go.
maybe we can start an online magazine in an homage to mad .
You can definitely continue to do movie and TV parities, Tom. If you create them as kick starter projects, you may earn triple the money that you did for publication.
Thank you for all the movie parodies you’ve done!
This is very sad, especially in view of the fact that the ‘new” Mad was quite good in the beginning. I’m going to miss your work in each issue! The handwriting was on the wall recently however, with the firing of Bill Morrisson. I felt that this last issue, as I read it BEFORE the news broke, was quite inferior to the other issues and it definitely concerned me. I hoped it was just a dud out of 8 issues, but I was bothered by the fact that just about all of the articles (except yours of course!) were 1-2 pages and not up to the usual standards and Al Jaffee was missing!! It seemed to me that these articles were hanging around and just used in the absence of a real editor and likely depression among the staff who could feel what was coming.
A sad day indeed.
Tom, thank you for this and for your contributions to MAD. I am a life long reader as are my kids. We will always be fans.
It’s been a nice run….Thanks Tom for all the great work you and the rest of the gang has contributed to MAD!
[…] (12:45 p.m.): Tom Richmond, another Mad artist, confirms everything in a detailed post on his website. An […]
Damn! MAD was such an influence on me and my work as an artist and cartoonist.
Thank you, Tom for your contributions and hard, hard work.
Hello, I’m from Argentina, I met the magazine at the end of 1979 and I love it. There was a version of my country that was the one I read, I do not get it years ago and I do not speak in English. Thanks for so much humor, Today Alfred E neuman dead, something good had to come out of this.
In the words of Melvin Coznowski (aka AEN), “What, Me Worry?”
Just read it and still in shock, although, as you said, most of us saw it coming years ago. To be honest, I didn’t find the new MAD as great as the old, some of the humor I just didn’t get. Maybe I grew too accustomed to the movie and TV parodies of the past, and the other humor that was the basis for MAD. All the letters are good and reflect the feelings of MAD followers. I’m also glad to say that I’ve met you Tom, as well as having visited the MAD offices in NY and met Nick, John, Annie, Mort Drucker, and Jack Davis. Maybe now my collection of 550 issues of the first series will become more of a treasure, the second series of 10…meh! Also of more significance will be Alan Bernstein’s documentary of MAD, whenever it comes out. And who knows, maybe now the USPS will see fit to produce an Alfred E. Neuman stamp, since he won’t have to worry anymore!
David Lubin
Just one minor correction, Tom: Allie wasn’t laid off. She left voluntarily weeks ago to write for television.
Good luck in future endeavors. MAD was a cultural icon. Sad to see so many print publications disappear from the landscape.
Thank you for your post, Tom- very well said and sobering, which is what’s needed right now. I’m in a state of depression but it helps to be informed as to the workings of the “higher-ups”.
I’m a portuguese man that found out MAD magazine in my teens some 30 years ago (first brazilian MAD, then the original) and it stayed with me all my life. Sad news to hear indeed. Thank you for all the laughs all these years.
🙁
Tom, I don’t think we’ve met, but we have a million mutuals. I’m the Editor & Publisher of The American Bystander humor quarterly. I’ve spent the day comforting MAD fans online, and I’m as depressed by this as anybody, but there’s something really important to keep in mind as we discuss it.
This is like US auto manufacturers refusing to change as Japan and others built better cars, more cheaply. This is a business model problem.
MAD, the magazine as currently constructed — with the same people writing and drawing the same things — could make plenty of money. It could be ludicrously profitable. You could be paid 10x more, with much money to spare. It only “isn’t profitable” if you want it to be at the same scale as a movie.
In the 60s and 70s, corporations began diversifying into media, but publications have never really worked as arms of big corporations. They work great as small, usually family-owned businesses (see: Gaines, Raoul Fleishman, Malcolm Forbes), but in general can’t make the levels of profit that mega-corporations desire. Even worse, they’re capital-intensive, so even when you’re profitable, you’re having to spend $10 to make $12.
This is big corporate publishers are constantly trying to turn their iconic brands into digital products (which doesn’t work because readers don’t bond with digital like they do print, and you’re beholden to Facebook for circulation), or passively managed archives of material. Look for DC to set up a website where you can “pay just $1.99/mo for online access to all MAD material from 1952 to 2019!” That’s the contemporary corporate ideal for MAD — as it was for National Lampoon before it — and it’s a great way to destroy an iconic brand.
Notice that the wishes of readers — let’s aim low and say MAD has 100,000 of them — are not part of this equation. You can run a publication beautifully and very profitably with 100,000 readers; The American Bystander breaks even on 1,000 subscribers. But 100,000 is not big enough for DC to care. That’s all that this is about. They don’t know how to run it smaller, so they’re defaulting to the same crap other publishers have tried and failed with. (Playboy; Rolling Stone.)
MAD’s publishing model has been broken for at least 30 years. It’s an amazing testament to the quality of the book and the devotion of the fans that it has lasted this long. I also had high hopes for Bill’s version — he showed me a printer’s proof of the issue at a hot dog shack in Burbank — but the problem is bigger than MAD. Sure MAD has some significant editorial challenges, but if you fixed the publishing model, those would resolve.
Because of its Coke-like brand awareness and lack of advertising, MAD is actually better suited than most publications are to weather the storm. And its antiauthoritarian stance is more important than ever. It can and should be preserved for future generations to enjoy. I’ve resurrected two print humor magazines; perhaps I can help keep print MAD alive. I’d really like to; Harvey K. was good to me when I was young, and that’s a debt I’d like to repay.
What? Me Pissed Off?
Great working with you!
Another sacred American institution – and one of the better ones – disappears.
We might as well tear down the Washington Monument, outlaw baseball, hot dogs, and burn every apple pie.
(Sorry Moms…….)
Very sad. MAD was a large influence on my life creatively, and made my life more interesting when I became friends wit many MAD artists. I was the Creative Director of Rhino Records who were also owned by Warners. Even though we were making more money than all the other Warner owned music labels, it wasn’t enough. Sayonara art dept.
This magazine taught me more about political science in the 70s than any classroom could…all good things must come to an end…
Tom, sorry to hear this !! You were always good to me at the Comic Con to draw up a picture of me and Alfie. Your talent continues and hope to see you at a comic con in the near future. Alfie will always be with us.
Well, I knew this wouldn’t work out there. I mentioned that to you on Facebook. What kept Mad going after Gaines died was the fact that the staff was still around to keep the issues churning out. As time has gone on and the original staff and artists and writers have left us, it has been hard to fill the void, but I thought that keeping it in NYC was what was good for it. When you break the ties on something, it usually doesn’t work out. Yes, I kept getting the new Mad, but felt something was off about it.
C’est un scandale ! I bought my first issue in 1976 and it was good, as a French, to have funny material to expand my vocabulary. Now America is spelled Disneytrump, and it sucks. Me worry. Very.
Guess as a consumer we have to point the finger at ourselves. I went from buying it every month as a kid up to college, then slowly buying selected months based on the cover.
[…] Richmond Illustration Inc. My own thoughts: I feel very sad about this. I was never really in to it but knew it by osmosis (ie […]
Nicely done, Tom.
[…] part of the agreement slowly but surely went away,” Tom Richmond, a Mad artist, wrote in a detailed blog post on July 4. “Once Bill died, the slow but unstoppable taking over by the suits […]
I’m sad as both a contributor and a reader. I really thought they were doing some very fine work under Bill’s leadership.
Thanks, Tom, for your thoughtful and poignant discussion of this sad event. It was good to get your take on things from your insider perspective.
You have a lot to be proud of for your role in MAD, and a lot to be grateful for as the last generation associated with this grand and important publication. Future generations will look back enviously on the Mt. Olympus of talent at MAD.
Thank you, David. That means a lot coming from you.