Recently, I was allowed to barge my way into Mad Magazine’s “Farewell to NYC” Christmas party. The Mad offices are relocating to Burbank, California to be closer to the Warner Brothers HQ, which will allow WB to make terrible movies out of Mad properties just as fast as they make them out of DC comic books! The Mad editorial staff generally prefers lox over sushi, and so have largely decided not to make the move to Cali’. This party was held to close the book on one era of Mad. Now: all hail the new era, where Mad will be delivered in pill form!

Anyway, here are some snaps!

 

I made sure to keep the exit in sight at all times, just in case Mort Drucker showed up looking for the kilo I promised him in 1983.

 

Angelo Torres and John Kovaleski, both trying to find the nicest way to tell me that they’d rather lick a plunger than contribute work to my next issue of “PEEK!”

 

Yours truly with editor and cartoonist Jacob Lambert, who knows how to take any worthless nonsense and make something better of it.

 

See what I mean?

 

Here’s Nick Meglin, who confused the “farewell” art book that he was supposed to hand to editor John Ficarra for a menu. (Things got awkward when he asked if the Sergio Aragonés was caught fresh that morning.)

 

That look you get when Sam Viviano realizes who he has been sending checks to all these years.

 

Left to right: artists James Warhola, Al Jaffee and Peter Kuper. Al lives his life the way he draws it, a fact I realized when I developed my film negatives. It turns out my photo of him is also a fold-in!