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As many of you who have read the blog post below this one know, MAD magazine is folding like one of Al Jaffee’s trademark fold-ins. Whoops, there goes another rubber tree plant! (Or as MAD themselves would have put it, “ShlaBOINK!! There goes another squamish pritz!!!)
Also, there goes another client for yours truly! So now is the time for me to get serious. I am going to step up my game and get this site updating with two strips a week to keep you coming back! (I want The Hero’s Journey completed almost as much as Roadkill wants to start peeling his quarry like an onion!)
It will take me about a month to get into that groove, as I have to bank some content, but I’m ready if you are! And there’s more: I am going to start putting out even more content on this site with the goal of getting Whatisdeepfried.com self-sufficient by the end of the year. But that will be up to you!
After 67 years, MAD magazine is packing it in.
As a client, MAD was the crown jewel of my very thin resume, and cartooning for them has definitely been the high-water mark of my career. I am proud of the features I created for them, and especially proud of the ones that seemed to really hit the public’s funny bone, such as Scooby Don’t and Detective Slow-On-The-Draw.
I’ve also had the rare distinction of helping pull the plug of both of MAD’s ventilators: appearing in the last New York-era issue published out of their Mad-ison Avenue offices, as well as in the eighth and nearly-final issue of the Burbank, CA relaunch that began last year when parent company Warner Bros. moved the operation across the country (a move which did not include almost any of the editorial talent that had steered the ship for decades.)
But even as MAD kicks the bucket, I still managed to scratch one goal off my own bucket list: dropping cameos of my favorite Internet personalities– Mike, Jay and Rich of Red Letter Media— into the background of “The Preposterous Palpatine Plothole” comic that I crafted with my friend and fellow NY MAD alum Jon Bresman. Talk about good timing!
Now, some might say that the common factor in MAD‘s repeated morbidity was my appearing in it, but we all know who really staked the magazine through the heart: Pete Buttigieg.
Just recently, Mayor Pete, in an effort to zing Donald Trump for comparing him to Alfred E. Neuman, told the press that he didn’t get the reference. “I’ll be honest. I had to Google that,” he said, in what was probably number three of the five daily salats he performs to prove his hipster bona fides to the kids. (The guy is nearly 40– he knows who fucking Alfred E. Neuman is.)
Did Buttigieg hand-wave MAD out of existence? If so, the joke is on him. The only thing worse than being in MAD was not being in it. And for a guy who is so earnest about appealing to the youngins, you’d think he’d have been more interested in showing up in MAD. It might have given his run for the White House some much needed traction.
MAD, you cracked Cracked, whacked Wacko, sicked-up on Sick, and, in a rare moment of generosity, helped Crazy get on the meds that have turned their life around. You were the Alpha and Omega of childhood bad taste. We shall not see your like again.
But by the grace of the Neuman, the Kaputnik and the Holy Klutz, I can say honestly and with pride (plus a little dyspepsia): ME NOT WORRIED!!