Sadly, I never grew up with it, but I’ve been FINALLY delving into the comics medium (like…the entirety of it), and Harvey Kutzman IMO might be the most influential, but sadly unsung, artists that America has ever produced. So naturally, I’m curious to see if other people love it and were lucky enough to grow up with it.
50 comments
Yes, I loved it from ages 11-14ish
I did not…never appealed to me.
Yes, I wasn’t super into it but I would read it every now and again
I would get my mom to buy copies of it when I would come across it (at the grocery store? no idea) but we never subscribed to it or anything. Also a lot of the jokes went over my head.
Yep Mad and Cracked magazine.
Absolutely! It was the first magazine you looked for when scanning the rack, and always, always a guaranteed purchase.
I did not. I don’t think I even heard about it until adulthood.
I had a few issues of Mad Magazine. I don’t remember any specifics about it though, just that it was appropriately named
I watched MAD TV, but never read the magazine.
Yes! I used to have a subscription in the 1980s when I was a teenager
Yes, my father proudly gave me my first subscription for my 13th birthday.
Back in the 70s
Yes
Definitely.
We used to go food shopping with my mom when we were kids and immediately head for the magazine section where we’d sit on the floor and read until she was done. MAD Magazine was definitely one I went to frequently.
my library had it, from 10-15 or so I thought it was hilarious
I was more of a MadTV person, but I read a little Mad Magazine and enjoyed it. I just didn’t have a ton of my own money like most kids, so given the opportunity to buy magazines, I’d always go for Nintendo Power instead
Yes, I did.
I read it, not sure how much growing up I did.
Yes I did, it was very popular in the 70’s. Also Cracked magazines
Absolutely.
I did. I’ve been a big comedy fan since I was about 6. I used to beg my mom to buy it for me. It worked about half the time.
No I grew up on Boys Life which is a very healthy magazine.
I never read Mad so cannot give an evaluation.
Sort of.
My dad dealt in classic cars and parts for a large portion of my childhood and one time he got a car that had a bunch of old MAD magazines from the late 60s and early 70s which introduced me to MAD. Up until around age 13 I’d buy them occasionally when I had the money and read them at the grocery store when I’d go with my mom.
But I never had a subscription or anything.
Yes, even had a subscription for a while from 1996-2000ish, when I was a teenager.
I also bought the [60s and 70s paperback compilations](https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSVloWtnGLT_sXyvqcwVaJDDnphB0IqJrDqeA&usqp=CAU) when I found them at garage sales or thrift stores and got the [massive CD-ROM set](https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRffUIwtxsWPpS7JLAG2O-et-w0lu2xDoI0BPJMOC2-Q-7xLIXLVWbYFDQ&s=10) that had every issue published before 1998 for Christmas but didn’t use it much because my crappy Windows 95 computer couldn’t really handle it 🙁
I had a subscription from ages 12-14. I picked up a copy a couple years ago, and it’s just not the same.
Aside from the fact that my sense of humor has changed since I was 11, a few of the core writers and editors have died, and the newer ones aren’t as good.
Of course.
I once got in trouble at the store because I folded the back page without buying it first.
I sure did!
Al Jaffee just passed away at 102, BTW.
Yup. The late 80s early 90s was my jam. Last year I moved out of state and bad to go through some old boxes. I found a handful of old mad mags. One of them was the spoof in wwf wrestling. Flipped thru it and went thru a 30 year time warp
No. I had the vague impression it was for bad kids. I was reading Archie comics.
Sounds obnoxiously goodie two shoes, I know.
I asked ChatGPT to craft an Al Jaffee answer. This is what I got.
“Grow up reading MAD Magazine? What do you think, I was born yesterday? That magazine was my survival guide through childhood and adolescence, teaching me that humor is the ultimate weapon against stupidity and conformity. And boy, did I need that lesson!”
Yup, I was obsessed with it for a year or two, around age 9-10. The message, aimed directly at pre-teens and teens hit perfectly, and that was: “Your suspicion that the adult world is filled with absurdity and hypocrisy… is completely correct.”
RIP Al Jaffee, creator of the Fold-Ins and Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions, who just died recently.
Nope; but did watch a lot of mad TV. Most of it would probably make me cringe today, but was funny as hell to me back then.
Yeah for a few years right around when I was also really into Weird Al Yankovic, probably 9-12 years old or so.
Of course. Late ’60s and ’70s. People who thought MAD was dumb or stupid never read it (and that included my parents).
It had nuanced, subtle satires of movies and literature; I remember deft parodies of classic authors / poets like Melville, Poe, and Emerson, and meticulous, hilarious rewrites of movie-musical lyrics. I don’t think people would get MAD on a broad scale today. You had to know the antecedents to appreciate the satire; and our idea of literacy has changed.
Other times MAD would print the classics intact and illustrate them in insane fashion, which meant the mag could kinda, sorta be a class in English lit appreciation. Example courtesy Kurtzman: http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-89cQ81XiP8c/TjanRE8u0mI/AAAAAAAARvM/VWnDwVFbqGs/s1600/Mad%2B009%2BBill%2BElder%2B001.jpg
And so much of the writing was in this wild, subversive, frantic, New York Jewish-Yiddish voice. Nobody else did that. It is thanks to MAD that I still use the Yiddish adjective “furschlugginer” (meaning crazy, ill-conceived, junky) decades later.
The core gang of contract artists — not just Kurtzman and the just-departed Al Jaffee but Don Martin, Jack Davis, Mort Drucker, Jack Rikard, all referred to lovingly on the masthead as “the usual gang of idiots” — had to be the finest group of its kind in the history of American humor. There’s nothing like MAD today.
I found my dad’s and uncle’s stash of the old magazines from when they were kids and teens. I spent HOURS reading them and bought the new ones as well. Later I found that a friend of mine’s ex-husband was a cartoonist for Mad. She showed me all his old drawings and gave me some of his signed stuff.
I was born in 1978, and yes I absolutely did. I wish they had as much influence on more recent generations as they did on prior generations. It warped our minds, but in a good way.
Yes, I did. Took them to school to read in down times. My English teacher took mine for reading in class, read it after, and gave it back. RIP Mrs. H.
💯
For a little window there—I was maybe age 7–10.
Also, we just got my 85 year old FIL a subscription again! He’s pretty psyched but I’m a little concerned he won’t get much out of satire pointed at moden celebrities. Probably gonna pick him up some classic back issues too.
Not me but my husband did. My mother in law claims it made him cynical. We have the books so my daughter will as well.
“What, me worry?”
No, but I know if it.
No, but I know if it.
Nope, but I did grow up on Cracked
Nope, grew up with the show.
I’m younger so no, but I did grow up watching MAD on Cartoon Network in and around 2010-11.
What? Me worry?
Of course!
No. It wasn’t that popular when/where I went to school.
This thread is biased to Yesses. Mad was not That popular. I never knew anyone into it.