Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, we're going on tour and you can come
Speaker 1: out and see us in Orlando on August twelfth, Nashville
Speaker 1: on September sixth, and we're gonna wrap it all up
Speaker 1: on September ninth in our hometown of Atlanta, GA.
Speaker 2: That's right, And these are the last shows of the year.
Speaker 2: This has been a really good show this year. We're
Speaker 2: super excited about it, and this is going to be
Speaker 2: your only chance to be in the theater with us,
Speaker 2: and you know, like fifteen sixteen hundred of your closest pals.
Speaker 1: So go to stuff youshould know dot com and check
Speaker 1: out our tour page for links and information, and you
Speaker 1: can also go to link tree slash sysk for the
Speaker 1: same stuff. We'll see you guys this August and September.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey,
Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck
Speaker 1: and Jerry's here. You know, the usual gang of idiots,
Speaker 1: and this is Stuff you Should Know. Very nuts. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I kind of had to say something like thin stunt
Speaker 1: you think.
Speaker 2: Right off the bat?
Speaker 1: Oh, sure, right off the bat, like a bunt that
Speaker 1: hits you yourself in the foot.
Speaker 2: So you were, of course referencing Mad magazine, and that
Speaker 2: was how they referred to themselves to their staff.
Speaker 1: Yeah, basically forever.
Speaker 2: Yeah, one of the great all time satirical rags, one
Speaker 2: of the earliest. It's funny. Right before you got on,
Speaker 2: Jerry said something about did the Cracked website come after
Speaker 2: the Mad magazine? And I said, well, I think she
Speaker 2: conflated them. And I was like no, I was like,
Speaker 2: Cracked was Cracked and Mad was Mad, right, And I
Speaker 2: very quickly looked up because I was like, you know,
Speaker 2: I think Cracked was kind of like a Mad ripoff,
Speaker 2: but they were pretty close together. Mad started in fifty
Speaker 2: two and Cracked started in fifty eight.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but was very far from the only Mad imitator.
Speaker 1: I won't say rip off, but imitator. What else there was?
Speaker 1: Hugh Hefner had one called Trump. Oh yeah, there were
Speaker 1: other ones called Humbug, both of which Mad originator Harvey
Speaker 1: Kurtzman worked on. There was apparently it was like a
Speaker 1: thing like Mad made such a splash early on, as
Speaker 1: we'll see that it basically created a whole new genre,
Speaker 1: I guess.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you and I were both fans as young'in's right.
Speaker 2: I mean we've talked about this.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I was going through. There's a site called
Speaker 1: Doug Guildford's Mad Cover Site.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you can spend a lot of time there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you can. I believe he has like, like, I
Speaker 1: think there's five hundred and fifty three total original issues
Speaker 1: that they ever released, and I believe he has them all,
Speaker 1: at least the cover scan and then some of them.
Speaker 1: He's gone to the trouble of scanning the contents too,
Speaker 1: so you can read Mad Magazine online.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: But I went through and looked at covers until I
Speaker 1: started recognizing when like I own that, and then kept
Speaker 1: going through and then they started to taper off and
Speaker 1: I didn't recognize them anymore. In doing so, I was
Speaker 1: able to go back and figure out that I was
Speaker 1: an avid Mad magazine reader from September of nineteen eighty
Speaker 1: six through September of nineteen eighty eight, my entire tenth, eleventh,
Speaker 1: and twelfth years of life.
Speaker 2: I did the same thing. Awesome, because I was kind
Speaker 2: of curious too. I was like, when did I even start?
Speaker 2: And man, I was, of course I'm a little older
Speaker 2: than you, but I was earlier aged as well, because
Speaker 2: I was into it from like eighty to eighty five ish,
Speaker 2: so I was like nine through fourteen and fifteen and
Speaker 2: then a little bit after that. I'm sure, but I
Speaker 2: don't know if you were like me. Mad was an
Speaker 2: expensive magazine for a kid.
Speaker 1: It was cheap and even said so on the cover.
Speaker 2: It was more expensive than other magazines, and one reason
Speaker 2: is because they did not until two thousand and one
Speaker 2: have advertisements to also bring in money, so they made
Speaker 2: their money off of newsstands and subscriptions. And I just remember,
Speaker 2: you know, throwing down for a Mad cost a little dough,
Speaker 2: So I didn't have a ton of them. Got some
Speaker 2: hand me downs from Scott, of course, nice, but so
Speaker 2: many of those covers and movie parodies, especially from the
Speaker 2: great Mort Drucker, really just stuck with me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, same here, and he was far and away
Speaker 1: the greatest of all the Mad illustrators, and all of
Speaker 1: them were really great in their own way, but Mort
Speaker 1: Drucker was. Yeah, if you're familiar with Mad, all of
Speaker 1: the movie parodies, the TV parodies that were just that
Speaker 1: looked dead on like the people. That was Mort Drucker.
Speaker 1: And he was named at least in one of the
Speaker 1: articles I read as possibly the greatest caricature artists of
Speaker 1: all time, like in history. Yeah, and I would not really,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't. I wouldn't go against that.
Speaker 2: Now. He did almost exclusively movies though, because their TV
Speaker 2: guy was Angels. Yeah, angela tourist did mostly TV and
Speaker 2: Drunker did mostly movies.
Speaker 1: But they, I mean, they had similar styles. It wasn't like,
Speaker 1: you know, Night and Day, like comparing Don Martin and
Speaker 1: you know, more Drucker or something like that. But and
Speaker 1: no shade on Angelo Torres's work either. So but yes,
Speaker 1: they were more expensive than comic books for sure, Like
Speaker 1: even out of the gate the first Mad magazine cost
Speaker 1: twenty five cents, which is like several hundred dollars today,
Speaker 1: I presume. So, yeah, it was when you can get
Speaker 1: a comic book for like ten cents at the time.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And and you know, it cannot be overstated how
Speaker 2: much Mad sort of laid the groundwork for modern satire. Uh.
Speaker 2: And then as we'll see, all so musical satire and
Speaker 2: things like the Onion and the National Lampoon, things like
Speaker 2: that probably wouldn't well, they maybe would have eventually existed,
Speaker 2: but they certainly had a nice paved road in front
Speaker 2: of them thanks to Mad.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, it's kind of hard to imagine the
Speaker 1: world without things like the Simpsons and The Daily Show
Speaker 1: and all that. But I don't know. I mean, you
Speaker 1: could argue that it would be at least a different world,
Speaker 1: like you were saying, if not that they didn't exist
Speaker 1: at all because of Mad magazine. It's crazy. And one
Speaker 1: of the things that Mad magazine did is another thing
Speaker 1: that it's really hard to imagine not existing in the world,
Speaker 1: is teaching healthy skepticism to kids, adolescents basically. And I
Speaker 1: guess Art Spiegelman he created mouse Right, I mean us,
Speaker 1: the graphic novel. Okay, he had a great quote that
Speaker 1: I think really kind of got it across. At the
Speaker 1: point of Mad, especially early on through the mid seventies,
Speaker 1: is that the entire adult world is lying to you,
Speaker 1: and we are part of the adult world. Good luck
Speaker 1: to you. And that was I mean, that's what they did,
Speaker 1: and it was a I mean, I'm sure I learned
Speaker 1: a lot of skepticism from Mad as well. Absolutely, you
Speaker 1: just couldn't read it and not pick it up, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was the toly. So shall we talk history.
Speaker 1: Let's talk history, Chuck.
Speaker 2: All right, well we got we have to talk about
Speaker 2: EC Comics. It was short for Education Comics, founded in
Speaker 2: forty four by a guy named Maxwell Gaines, who was
Speaker 2: one of the progenitors of comic books period, and EC
Speaker 2: Comics was ended up merging with Detective Comics. But I
Speaker 2: hope I didn't get this wrong to form what we
Speaker 2: knew later on as DCAY and from the Maxwell gain
Speaker 2: side and from EC Comics we got titles like The
Speaker 2: Flash and Hawkman, Green Lantern and Wonder Women were probably
Speaker 2: the biggest ones. And I guess I should say this
Speaker 2: was the original incarnation as all American publications, right, and
Speaker 2: then later became EC.
Speaker 1: Yes, But those characters he helped bring to reality. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So he was a legend in the field, still is
Speaker 1: in the field of comics. But he died early, I guess,
Speaker 1: fairly youngish and at least suddenly I think I saw
Speaker 1: a boat accident or something like that. And his son,
Speaker 1: William Gaines Bill Gaines, took over the family business, and
Speaker 1: he had slightly different tastes than his father. He wasn't
Speaker 1: really interested in printing religious tracts or comics that featured
Speaker 1: people who were hurting you know, camels and sheep and
Speaker 1: talking about God. He wanted to basically go in the
Speaker 1: exact opposite direction, so he changed the name of EC
Speaker 1: from Education Comics Entertainment Comics, and he started publishing what
Speaker 1: became some of the most notorious, gory, violent, gleefully sick
Speaker 1: horror magazines around.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was. It was sort of a way to
Speaker 2: stand out because comics were huge, huge business. I think
Speaker 2: by the nineteen fifties there were about one point two
Speaker 2: billion comics sold a year.
Speaker 1: That's like the number of podcasts now.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. In twenty five percent were crime and horror,
Speaker 2: well kind of like podcasts actually, and so easy you know,
Speaker 2: Tales from the crypt We have Easy to thank for that,
Speaker 2: and just lots of that. You know. You could sort
Speaker 2: of see the foundation of MAD being laid, even though
Speaker 2: MAD didn't do horror sci fi per se. Of course,
Speaker 2: they dabbled in that and satire, but they started to
Speaker 2: tackle things with themes like you know, racism and police
Speaker 2: corruption and bigotry and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so there's like the contours of teaching kids like hey,
Speaker 1: these things exist. But it was in the form of
Speaker 1: like horror comics or war comics or Cowboy comics or
Speaker 1: something like that, right, yeah, yeah, And so this is
Speaker 1: a time where I mean we're talking the early fifties, right,
Speaker 1: this is like Pleasantville type America, and they're talking about
Speaker 1: like drug addiction and stuff to ten and twelve year old.
Speaker 1: So it was pretty groundbreaking what they were doing. And
Speaker 1: they because of that, they drew the attention of the
Speaker 1: moral panic that started to erupt over comic books that
Speaker 1: apparently was brought on by a psychiatrist named Frederic or
Speaker 1: Friedrich Wertham Vertum probably Fredrick Wortham, but he wrote a
Speaker 1: book called Seduction of the Innocent and then he specifically
Speaker 1: called out some of the ec comics and described, you know,
Speaker 1: what was going on in them, and it was basically saying,
Speaker 1: comic books are corrupting our youth. They're the reason that
Speaker 1: juvenile delinquents exist. It's comic books. And the Senate and
Speaker 1: Congress said, oh, we should, we should look into this. Then.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so you know, they formed a Senate subcommittee in
Speaker 2: spring of nineteen fifty four, as they do as they do,
Speaker 2: and that Wortham or Wam as you I think probably
Speaker 2: correctly pronounced thanks. He kind of opened up by saying
Speaker 2: this is one original quote. I hate to say it's senator,
Speaker 2: but I think Hitler was a beginner. Compared to the
Speaker 2: comic book industry, they get the children much younger, so
Speaker 2: you can kind of see the hysteria going on of
Speaker 2: what they call the comic book menace.
Speaker 1: Plus completely ignoring the Hitler youth right exactly.
Speaker 2: And one very famous exchange that if you look up
Speaker 2: anything on this these subcommittee hearings came between Gaines's son, who,
Speaker 2: like you said, took over for Pops, and a senator
Speaker 2: named Estes Kefalver Keith Keith Walver hm not Cafalver, Keith Aalver.
Speaker 1: I think it was Keith Aver. I can't remember if
Speaker 1: this is the thing. Miss Keith fav hearings or if
Speaker 1: he held some other stuff, but he he was. He
Speaker 1: liked to hold hearings from what I understand.
Speaker 2: Of course, he was a Democrat from Tennessee. And there
Speaker 2: was one exchange between Gaines and Keith Aalber where he says,
Speaker 2: where they're talking about, you know, one of the covers,
Speaker 2: and he said, this seems to be a man with
Speaker 2: a bloody axe holding a woman's head up which has
Speaker 2: been severed. From her body. Do you think this is
Speaker 2: in good taste? And this is after Gaines had already said,
Speaker 2: you know, our limit is to publish within the bounds
Speaker 2: of good taste. Uh huh. And Gaines said, yes, sir,
Speaker 2: I do. For the cover of a horror comic, a
Speaker 2: cover in bad taste, for example, might be defined as
Speaker 2: holding the head a little higher so that the net
Speaker 2: can be seen dripping blood from it, and moving the
Speaker 2: body over a little further so that the neck of
Speaker 2: the body could be seen to be bloody. And the
Speaker 2: senator said, you have blood coming out of her mouth,
Speaker 2: and gain says a little And Keithalver says, here is
Speaker 2: blood on the acts. I think most adults are shocked
Speaker 2: by that. So that was a very famous exchange where
Speaker 2: Gaines he went on to basically make the point in
Speaker 2: what may have been the first you know, mic drop.
Speaker 2: I won't read the whole quote, but he basically is
Speaker 2: talking about the fact of juvenile delinquency. He said, it's
Speaker 2: a product of real environment in which the child lives,
Speaker 2: and not the fiction he reads. There are many problems
Speaker 2: that reach our children today. The problems are economic and social,
Speaker 2: and they are complex, And he was right but it
Speaker 2: didn't matter. No.
Speaker 1: I mean, looking back seventy five years later, you're just
Speaker 1: kind of like, oh, that's neat that that happened. But
Speaker 1: if you kind of put yourself in this moment, Bill
Speaker 1: Gaines was the only comic book publisher, as far as
Speaker 1: I could tell, who is willing to step up to
Speaker 1: the Senate and be like, no, this is all wrong.
Speaker 1: This guy's a crackpot. We actually have real societal problems
Speaker 1: that are causing juvenile delinquency, and you guys are coming
Speaker 1: after comic books. He took on the Senate, or at
Speaker 1: least the Senate Committee, and it was a They were
Speaker 1: very public hearings, and he stepped up when no one
Speaker 1: else would. And I read an account of the whole
Speaker 1: thing on the Comics Association site and they said that
Speaker 1: at first he was just killing it, but then he
Speaker 1: started to kind of slow down, lose focus, and he
Speaker 1: ended up getting pummeled by the senators, and some of
Speaker 1: his less desirable quotes ended up on the front page
Speaker 1: of the New York Times. They equated it to him
Speaker 1: taking Benza Dream too early so that he peaked and
Speaker 1: started to get tired during the hearings. Because the hearings
Speaker 1: were postponed, but regardless he got he was defeated. And
Speaker 1: some people actually say, if he hadn't drummed up all
Speaker 1: that attention and drew the ire of the Senate, who
Speaker 1: knows what would have happened. But the upshot was that
Speaker 1: the comic book publishers got together and said, who whoa, whoa,
Speaker 1: You guys don't have to censor us. We don't need
Speaker 1: government sensors. We can do this ourselves. We're going to
Speaker 1: create the Comic Magazine Association of America, and within that,
Speaker 1: we're going to create a committee, a review board called
Speaker 1: the Comic Code Authority, and every single comic book that
Speaker 1: is published in this country will be reviewed and either
Speaker 1: given a stamp of approval or rejected by the Comics
Speaker 1: Code Authority. And you can rely on us. Just stay
Speaker 1: out of this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and this was this is about three months in
Speaker 2: change after the end of the hearings, so they were
Speaker 2: clearly kind of working on this. You know, I doubt
Speaker 2: if they just threw that together last second, like they
Speaker 2: saw the writing on the wall and got together. And
Speaker 2: you know, this was good in a way because it
Speaker 2: kept the Senate out of their business. But what it
Speaker 2: also did was kind of self censor because you couldn't
Speaker 2: all of a sudden get a comic out there unless
Speaker 2: it had this stamp of approval from the Code Authority,
Speaker 2: and if it had the word weird or crime or
Speaker 2: terror or horror just in the title, it was rejected
Speaker 2: right off the bat.
Speaker 1: Yes, so the I mean, the choice was clear. It
Speaker 1: was either you know, fold your operation or start submitting
Speaker 1: to these standards that the Comic Code Authority is laying
Speaker 1: down now. And Bill Gaines said, We're okay, that's it.
Speaker 1: We're just not going to publish those comic books anymore.
Speaker 1: And he stopped publishing almost every single comic book he
Speaker 1: had except for one. There was one comic book that
Speaker 1: they had released previously, and it was a humor comic
Speaker 1: and it was called Tales Calculated to Drive You Mad.
Speaker 1: And that was the origin of Mad Magazine. It was
Speaker 1: a humor comic book. That was the one thing that
Speaker 1: remained after Bill Gains burned down his entire comic book
Speaker 1: publishing empire. Rather than submit to censorship, you forgot the
Speaker 1: colon I was leaving that for you.
Speaker 2: Calculated to drive you mad. And by the way, mad
Speaker 2: is always in all caps colon humor in a jugular vein.
Speaker 1: Good. It is good. So it's not an overstatement to
Speaker 1: say that Bill Gaines was a bit of a hero
Speaker 1: for being willing to stand up to, you know, a
Speaker 1: moral panic and put himself out there is potentially the
Speaker 1: face of, you know, the evil that everybody was worried about,
Speaker 1: and then just saying like, Okay, I lost, but I'm
Speaker 1: not going to just you know, if you beat you
Speaker 1: beat me, but that doesn't mean I'm going to join you.
Speaker 1: I'm going to go figure out another way to do it.
Speaker 1: So he just kept going in a different direction.
Speaker 2: All right. I think that's a very robust setup for us.
Speaker 2: So we're gonna collect our thoughts and we'll be right
Speaker 2: back jogging job. I know we're going to talk about
Speaker 2: things we love with Mad. But two movie parodies that
Speaker 2: really stood out were movies that I didn't even see
Speaker 2: at the time, actually three of them. And that was
Speaker 2: kind of the fun thing about Mad is I wasn't
Speaker 2: allowed to see some of this stuff. Oh okay, but
Speaker 2: I could read the parody, so I remember crime More
Speaker 2: versus crime More instead of Kramer versus Kramer was a
Speaker 2: big one. Being not all there for being there and
Speaker 2: the one for the Shining, and I can't remember it
Speaker 2: wasn't the Shinning that was the simbsence. I can't remember
Speaker 2: what it was called. But I remember reading the Shining
Speaker 2: parody too, like long before I could see that.
Speaker 1: Oh man, I want to read that one. I'll bet
Speaker 1: it was just legendary.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was good.
Speaker 1: I don't remember any particular ones, but I mean I
Speaker 1: know that there were ones on like Alf and Rambo
Speaker 1: and see here.
Speaker 2: Were just after me. Yeah, combined, we have a really
Speaker 2: good swatch.
Speaker 1: But they would also do like like adult stuff. This
Speaker 1: wasn't like they weren't like what's the cool movie with
Speaker 1: teens right now? Like they did a cover one on
Speaker 1: La law Well, Cramer versus Creamy, Kramer versus Creamer. It's
Speaker 1: a great example too. But that's funny. That's like people
Speaker 1: getting their news from the Daily Show. Today. You're getting
Speaker 1: to watch movies that you weren't allowed to see through
Speaker 1: Mad magazine.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, and we'll kind of see why here in
Speaker 2: a minute. That was a very nice setup. Actually think
Speaker 2: so too.
Speaker 1: My thoughts still aren't collected, though, so we might be
Speaker 1: in trouble.
Speaker 2: All right, So tales calculated to Drive You Mad is
Speaker 2: the only title that Bill Gaines stuck with. He had
Speaker 2: a cartoonist named from EC, named Harvey Kurtzman, who was
Speaker 2: an army vet in World War Two and he did
Speaker 2: military comics for EC, but kind of got tired of
Speaker 2: this and was like, you know, I'm a funny guy,
Speaker 2: I got a sense of humor. I'd rather work on
Speaker 2: humor things because I'm a big fan of humor magazines.
Speaker 2: And he said, why don't we spoof other comics, Like
Speaker 2: do a comic that satirizes and spoofs comics, And so
Speaker 2: they started doing that. They started spoofing horror comics, sci
Speaker 2: fi comics. Bill Gains was beside himself. He thought it
Speaker 2: was brilliant and mad sort of as we knew it
Speaker 2: was really born when Kurtzman had that idea.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And one of the reasons it was so brilliant
Speaker 1: was because they were using the same artists and writers
Speaker 1: who were creating those comics for the spoof. So they
Speaker 1: were really like dead on and they looked like they
Speaker 1: were supposed to look, and like they had this like
Speaker 1: the in joke humor that of anybody who was a
Speaker 1: fan of those comics. So it was a pretty cool
Speaker 1: idea to start, and it was right up Kurtzman's alley
Speaker 1: for sure, because he'd kind of got on board with
Speaker 1: some of the other comics like war comics and stuff
Speaker 1: like that. But it wasn't It was not a hit
Speaker 1: out of the gate at all. It was apparently I
Speaker 1: think issue number four in nineteen fifty three, that was
Speaker 1: the one that really kind of caught everyone's attention because
Speaker 1: they lampooned Superman with the pretty obvious title super Duperman.
Speaker 1: But it's it's really involved and funny, and it's still today.
Speaker 1: I was reading it this morning, I was like, this
Speaker 1: is pretty funny.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, I agree that very first panel has a
Speaker 2: super Duperman punching an old person on crutches. It was
Speaker 2: very dark character. Clark Bent was the the you know,
Speaker 2: the alter ego and the reason it's noteworthy because they
Speaker 2: had Dave Ruce helped us with this. He pointed out
Speaker 2: they had already done these spoofs like Flesh Garden and
Speaker 2: dragged Net instead of Dragnet for the TV side, but
Speaker 2: they got sued, well not sued, but they got a
Speaker 2: cease and desist from DC Comics and sort of strysand
Speaker 2: effect before strysand was knew that there was going to
Speaker 2: be an effect named for her, right, it got attention
Speaker 2: and all of a sudden, kids were reading these comic parodis.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there was a good one in June nineteen fifty
Speaker 1: four on Starchy, which was Archie, And I mean it
Speaker 1: was again really like well drawn, really interesting if you
Speaker 1: took a like a Archie and ran it through like
Speaker 1: what would happen in the real world, but it's still
Speaker 1: a parody. That's what they came up with. And like,
Speaker 1: so comic books were incredibly popular at the time, Like
Speaker 1: you were saying, they're billions being printed, right, Yeah, so
Speaker 1: this magazine or this comic book was spoofing comic books.
Speaker 1: So they just went in and just caught on like wildfire.
Speaker 1: So this was the one that Bill Gaines had left
Speaker 1: after he stopped publishing the horror comics and the Cowboy
Speaker 1: comics and the war comics and the sci fi comics.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and so you sort of hinted that, you know,
Speaker 2: Kramer versus Cramer and La Law these were sort of
Speaker 2: it wasn't necessarily stuff for kids, And that happened when
Speaker 2: they made this, which from a comic book perioding and
Speaker 2: satirizing other comic books to a magazine satirizing other magazines.
Speaker 2: A couple of stories why this happened. One was that
Speaker 2: Gaines was like, hey, listen, we're not going to be
Speaker 2: under the Comic Code Authority if we turn ourselves into
Speaker 2: a magazine. But apparently one of the real reasons that
Speaker 2: wasn't as public was Harvey Kirchman wanted to do this.
Speaker 2: He was sort of bored with a comic book thing,
Speaker 2: wanted to get into magazines, and so to keep Kertzman around,
Speaker 2: who was just a key early COG, switched to a
Speaker 2: larger format, to a glossy magazine, and all of a
Speaker 2: sudden they were spoofing magazines. And Kurtzman specifically even said
Speaker 2: for the past two years now, Matt has been dulling
Speaker 2: the senses of the country's youth. Now we get to
Speaker 2: work on the adults, right, even though I mean, I'm
Speaker 2: sure there were some adults reading it, but every kid
Speaker 2: I knew read it.
Speaker 1: But it did definitely like update their readership into a
Speaker 1: slightly higher age category from you know, I think teenagers
Speaker 1: read comic books back then, but this was like, you know,
Speaker 1: you could find teenagers and now maybe college kids reading
Speaker 1: it as well because it was just geared slightly differently
Speaker 1: just by default, because it was parodying other magazines. Right,
Speaker 1: So Harvey Kurtzman has like fans still today who are like,
Speaker 1: if Kurtzman had never left, who knows how great Mad
Speaker 1: magazine would have been, because he was a perfectionist genius,
Speaker 1: which was his undoing, Like apparently he would miss publication
Speaker 1: dates because he was just tinkering with stuff endlessly. Everything
Speaker 1: needed to be tinkered with, and apparently he was really
Speaker 1: good at it. I read an article or an interview
Speaker 1: with Al Jaffey, who is the longest running cartoonists at MAD,
Speaker 1: and he was saying, like Kurtzman was the best editor
Speaker 1: he'd ever worked with, but everything needed editing, everything needed tinkering,
Speaker 1: which ma everything delayed and more expensive. And the reason
Speaker 1: Kurtzman left was not because Gaines said, hey, you need
Speaker 1: to to rain all this in or fired him or anything,
Speaker 1: but Gains very wisely retained editorial control. So Kritsman had
Speaker 1: to go ask Gains for everything, and Chrismin did not
Speaker 1: like that. Geniuses typically don't like that kind of thing,
Speaker 1: and so he struck out on his own after just
Speaker 1: a couple of years.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you know this is you know, when they
Speaker 2: made that switch to the magazine, This is when they
Speaker 2: all of a sudden could do like TV shows and movies.
Speaker 2: They got a whole lot more political and then as
Speaker 2: we'll see song periods and stuff like that. Another big,
Speaker 2: sort of long standing tradition with Mad was skewing marketing
Speaker 2: and pr and advertising, and they because they didn't have ads.
Speaker 2: And that was one of the things I loved about Mad,
Speaker 2: even though it cost a little more, is that every
Speaker 2: page was you know, some things were funnier than others, obviously,
Speaker 2: but every page each had funny content on it. The
Speaker 2: spoof ads, to me, were great. Everything they did was
Speaker 2: funny because they didn't have to just sort of bow
Speaker 2: to the advertiser. And it really would have been I
Speaker 2: don't never saw any post two thousand and one editions.
Speaker 2: It would be really weird for me to see a
Speaker 2: Mad magazine with a legitimate advertisement in it. I wouldn't know.
Speaker 2: I would look for the jokes still, somebody.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a little mind warping when you were used
Speaker 1: to it for decades, totally, you know not And yeah,
Speaker 1: that was a big part of it too. It's like,
Speaker 1: I mean, that's probably the most ubiquitous way people are
Speaker 1: lied to on a daily basis is through advertising. So
Speaker 1: it was essential that they lampoon ads too, just to
Speaker 1: They couldn't just leave those alone. It would have been
Speaker 1: distinctly impure, and neither Harvey Kurtzman nor Bill gains would
Speaker 1: have stood for that for sure.
Speaker 2: All Right, So Kurtzman and Leaves in nineteen fifty six,
Speaker 2: this is what you were talking about with Hugh Heffner.
Speaker 2: He had his satirical humor magazine called Trump Believe it
Speaker 2: or Not, four issues. Then he went on to work
Speaker 2: for the other one you mentioned, Humbug, which was only
Speaker 2: about eleven issues. But he, you know, like you said,
Speaker 2: he still has people that sort of bowed him today
Speaker 2: because he laid the groundwork and the foundation for sort
Speaker 2: of satire as we know it today.
Speaker 1: Yeah. He also went on to create a longstanding Playboy
Speaker 1: cartoon from the sixties to the seventies called Little Annie Fanny,
Speaker 1: and it was just a dirty cartoon that apparently, yeah,
Speaker 1: really fulfilled him as an artist. But yeah, he was
Speaker 1: just a legend, just as much as like Bill Gaines
Speaker 1: was maybe more in some circles for sure, but after Kurtzman,
Speaker 1: and Kurtzman is very much credited with establishing the tone,
Speaker 1: the voice, the idea behind MAD that was carried on
Speaker 1: essentially until twenty eighteen, maybe as we'll see, but and
Speaker 1: in turn also creating laying the foundation for American sattire
Speaker 1: to come. Right after that, a guy named Al Feldstein
Speaker 1: came on board, and I get the impression a little
Speaker 1: more of a workhorse and a little less of a
Speaker 1: endlessly tinkering perfectionist. And he brought on some of the
Speaker 1: names that you are familiar with, like Mort Drucker and
Speaker 1: Al Jaffy and Don Martin and just these longtime MAD contributors.
Speaker 1: They came on under Al Feldstein's overseeing ship. You like that,
Speaker 1: Huh yeah?
Speaker 2: Sure. In fact, Senate committees should not be committees on
Speaker 2: oversight anymore. They should be on overseeing ship.
Speaker 1: I agree, it's got a little more flair to it.
Speaker 2: So Feldstein, one of the key things, besides, like you said,
Speaker 2: hiring you some legendary staff, was bringing on a legendary mascot,
Speaker 2: and that is Alfredy Newman. He named Alfredy Newman or
Speaker 2: attached that name. Apparently that was a kind of a pseudonym.
Speaker 2: They used a lot of kind of goofy, funny pseudonyms
Speaker 2: in the office for different things. ALFREDY Newman was one
Speaker 2: of them. But if you don't know anything about Mad
Speaker 2: magazine and you've never picked up an issue, you still
Speaker 2: probably can look at the little little Opie Taylor, redheaded,
Speaker 2: gap tooth, big eared. Well, I was about to say kid,
Speaker 2: but it was always hard to determine Alfredy Newman's age
Speaker 2: in a way, and that was part of the fun,
Speaker 2: I guess. But that was the mascot. They wanted a mascot,
Speaker 2: they got one, along with the the I don't know
Speaker 2: what you would call it a slogan, yeah, catchphrase, which
Speaker 2: is what me worry? What comma me worry?
Speaker 1: Oh that's funny. I always read it as what me worry?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, Wow, Well you're we got two different brains, huh.
Speaker 2: I guess, so, I mean still the same thing.
Speaker 1: Really, I guess.
Speaker 2: So he was the first one to bring that image.
Speaker 2: I believe the first cover was issue number twenty five,
Speaker 2: but he had been sort of used in the magazine
Speaker 2: previous to that, and in the mid seventies there was
Speaker 2: an interview where he said, you know, I got this
Speaker 2: thing from this postcard in the early nineteen fifties that
Speaker 2: had the caption me Worry, I like that me y,
Speaker 2: Yeah exactly. And in nineteen sixty five this and of
Speaker 2: course this is you know, ten years before he admitted this.
Speaker 2: But in nineteen sixty five Man was actually sued by
Speaker 2: the widow of a cartoonist named Harry Spencer, who said, Hey,
Speaker 2: this postcard that you're going to talk about in ten
Speaker 2: years was stolen from my husband's work and he's had
Speaker 2: this copyright since nineteen fourteen. It's the name of the character,
Speaker 2: is the original Optimist or the me worry guy and
Speaker 2: mad and fighting the lawsuit said all right, listen, we
Speaker 2: know this image has been used before besides us, so
Speaker 2: readers find uses of Alfredy Newman out there. And they
Speaker 2: came back with a bunch dating back to the nineteenth century.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they traced it all the way back. There was
Speaker 1: a couple of historians that are mentioned in a Paris
Speaker 1: Review article. It's really interesting. It chronicles the evolution of
Speaker 1: Alfredy Newman. But they traced it back to an eighteen
Speaker 1: ninety four play called The New Boy. And they think
Speaker 1: that it's probable that the character that look that face
Speaker 1: is a mashup of the two actors that played the
Speaker 1: lead in The.
Speaker 2: New Boy, Ron Howard.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Ron Howard and Ron Howard sor ye. And this
Speaker 1: play like took America by storm. It was a big
Speaker 1: deal in the late nineteenth century. These actors were very
Speaker 1: much celebrated, and this character entered the pop culture and stayed.
Speaker 1: But over time people forgot where he came from originally
Speaker 1: until I mean, we're talking like the twenty ten's before
Speaker 1: somebody said it goes as far back as this for sure.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and Dave was kind of enough to include a
Speaker 2: bunch of cool uses. There was an auto parts store
Speaker 2: that used it, a soda Happy Jack soda in the
Speaker 2: nineteen thirties, a pain reliever in nineteen oh eight, all
Speaker 2: kinds of uses, and the judge basically was like, hey, listen,
Speaker 2: this is in the public domain. Everyone is using this.
Speaker 2: I don't know why, but everyone is using this goofy
Speaker 2: guy's face. And the Mad magazine or I'm sorry, the
Speaker 2: original affording human painting was by Norman Mingo, and for
Speaker 2: Mad they had some pretty strict rules of usage, which
Speaker 2: was you had to always have a forward, either a
Speaker 2: forward face face like not from an angle or from
Speaker 2: profile or anything like that, or just fully the back
Speaker 2: of his head that had been done, and any other
Speaker 2: usage of the face that was any different had to
Speaker 2: go through what I sort of think was probably a
Speaker 2: pretty strict like that was probably a pretty serious meeting
Speaker 2: at Mad magazine. If they wanted to change that in
Speaker 2: any way.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they'd be like, convince us, why right, exactly. But
Speaker 1: that's why that that Alfredy Newman is just so recognizable
Speaker 1: even when he's Yeah, I remember he was Lindy England.
Speaker 1: Wasn't that the private Abu Grabe who had the picture
Speaker 1: of her taken like pointing, like with with gun fingers
Speaker 1: at a like a naked, hooded, tortured prisoner.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Remember they did Alfredy Newman on the cover as her. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you knew exactly who he was spoofing, but you
Speaker 1: also could totally see that it was Alfredy Newman. All
Speaker 1: of it is because that Norman Mingo one just hit
Speaker 1: it so perfectly out of the game that there was
Speaker 1: just no reason to alter it at all.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I don't know, I never really thought about
Speaker 2: it's so ubiquitous and so just sort of burned in
Speaker 2: my brain. I was a kid, and it never occurred
Speaker 2: to me just what brilliant branding that was to not
Speaker 2: only just have this mascot and slogan, but to not
Speaker 2: change it and have it appear in much the same
Speaker 2: way every single time that you saw it, and you know,
Speaker 2: as a kid you were being I remember when I
Speaker 2: was first thinking about tattoos, I thought about getting Alfredy Newman.
Speaker 2: I would like it more than what I ended up getting,
Speaker 2: so I probably should have. But it was such a
Speaker 2: sort of iconic and still is such an iconic brand mark.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Same with the masthead too, the logo, the shape
Speaker 1: of the letters spelling out MAD all caps, that kind
Speaker 1: of thing just as much as him. The two went
Speaker 1: together just so perfectly well for sure. Yeah, But because
Speaker 1: they established that Harry's Spencer did not have any sort
Speaker 1: of copyright over Alfredy Newman or over that kid, that image,
Speaker 1: you could do and use Alfredy Newman yourself if you
Speaker 1: wanted to be a big jerk, and Mad couldn't do
Speaker 1: anything about it because they don't own the copyright to
Speaker 1: the image. It's in the he's in the public domain.
Speaker 1: But Alfredy Newman himself, any usage that has ever been
Speaker 1: created for mad if you if you use that, they
Speaker 1: could sue your pants off. It's just if you went
Speaker 1: out and created a new ALFREDY Newman type named it
Speaker 1: something different, then technically they couldn't do anything, but the
Speaker 1: whole world would be mad at you. I think unless
Speaker 1: it was really great.
Speaker 2: I know a certain jerk in Kansas that's a pretty
Speaker 2: great at photoshop.
Speaker 1: And then one last thing about mister A. E. Newman.
Speaker 1: That name was one of the hilarious, like made up
Speaker 1: names that they would use to like sign fake letters
Speaker 1: to the editor and that kind of stuff. That's where
Speaker 1: they were like, I think this name goes with this
Speaker 1: guy very.
Speaker 2: Well, totally one of the mini pseudonyms. I was just kidding,
Speaker 2: by the way about the jerk part. He knows who
Speaker 2: he is, sure, and he'll laugh at this, you hope.
Speaker 1: All right?
Speaker 2: Should we take a break, I guess all right, we're
Speaker 2: gonna come back and talk, probably too briefly about some
Speaker 2: of these legendary staffers that they had for you know,
Speaker 2: fifty years or so.
Speaker 1: We're gonna staff it up.
Speaker 2: Things and jogging job.
Speaker 1: Okay, Chuck. So I mentioned ourselves as the usual gang
Speaker 1: of videots. It's what everybody at Mad called themselves and
Speaker 1: called the whole crew, and everybody was very happy to
Speaker 1: be called that they were. Everybody had a really good
Speaker 1: sense of humors another way to put it, most of them,
Speaker 1: as we'll see. But I mentioned al Jaffe earlier and
Speaker 1: he apparently holds the Guinness record for the longest career
Speaker 1: as a comic artist. He started drawing for Mad in
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty five. Yeah, and when did he retire.
Speaker 2: He retired in twenty twenty and very sadly, I mean
Speaker 2: say sadly because he passed away. But he passed away
Speaker 2: at one hundred and two on April tenth of this year,
Speaker 2: on twenty twenty three. So had a I mean just
Speaker 2: a legend, what a life. Ended up going away with
Speaker 2: Kurtzman when he did Trump and Humbug, but came back
Speaker 2: to Mad magazine and was most well known for doing
Speaker 2: the fold, in which if you if you know Mad,
Speaker 2: you know the if you don't. It was the very
Speaker 2: last interior page of the magazine, like the inside of
Speaker 2: the back cover, basically where you would it was a
Speaker 2: visual trick where you would fold you know, it would
Speaker 2: be a picture and it would have text at the bottom,
Speaker 2: and then when you folded it over in a certain way,
Speaker 2: it would form a new picture, and not only that,
Speaker 2: but all new texts, Like I can't imagine laying these
Speaker 2: out was easy considering the text, like the picture is
Speaker 2: one thing, but to lay it out and have it
Speaker 2: say something different is a whole other thing.
Speaker 1: And it also sents some like significant stuff too, like
Speaker 1: it was often about like taxes or the government doing
Speaker 1: something shady or something like that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the two would always be they would always sort
Speaker 2: of link together. So whatever you had on that first
Speaker 2: initial thing might be it was kind of set up
Speaker 2: punchline basically, is how it worked for sure.
Speaker 1: And he in that interview I read with him, he
Speaker 1: said it take it to about two weeks to make
Speaker 1: one of those things. I believe it, and that the
Speaker 1: artists and I guess writers were all expected to produce
Speaker 1: twenty and then later on twenty five pages of material
Speaker 1: a year, and that was just the requirement. And if
Speaker 1: you hit it, it's not like you or didn't hit it.
Speaker 1: It's not like you were fired. But they did an
Speaker 1: annual trip abroad for like a week or two, all
Speaker 1: expenses paid by MAD and if you didn't hit your
Speaker 1: your quota, you weren't on that trip.
Speaker 2: Wow, it's pretty funny. I'm sure I'm not the only
Speaker 2: kid who tried to guess what the fold end image
Speaker 2: would be just by looking at the unfolded image. Sure,
Speaker 2: I used to stare at that thing trying to guess
Speaker 2: what it might be. And Jaffie was also popular for
Speaker 2: something that I had, the little side books I bought
Speaker 2: of snappy Answers to Stupid Questions?
Speaker 1: Did you like those?
Speaker 2: Loved them?
Speaker 1: So? Do you have a favorite? Oh? No, okay, you
Speaker 1: just loved.
Speaker 2: Them all, like a favorite joker, a favorite book, a
Speaker 2: favorite edition Anne.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, favorite snappy Answers to Stupid Questions page?
Speaker 2: Do you have one?
Speaker 1: No, I was just asking for you.
Speaker 2: Okay, no, no, no, but I loved him.
Speaker 1: Okay, what about So that's al Jaffy. That's right, We're
Speaker 1: moving on to Dick Department. I've never known how to
Speaker 1: say this man's name, Dick de.
Speaker 2: Bartolow de Bartolo.
Speaker 1: I think he was the one who wrote most of
Speaker 1: the parodies of TV movies. Just essentially any satire of
Speaker 1: like one of those two things was probably written by
Speaker 1: him between nineteen sixty four to twenty seventeen.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and de Bartolo was born in nineteen forty five,
Speaker 2: so he was submitting by nineteen sixty one as a
Speaker 2: like sixteen or seventeen year old and getting some of
Speaker 2: that stuff in there. And the best I can figure
Speaker 2: is he was kind of a full time staffer either
Speaker 2: at twenty or twenty one.
Speaker 1: It's really cool.
Speaker 2: He's just a kid, and like you said, partner with
Speaker 2: Mort Drucker and the great Angelo Taurus, who, as you
Speaker 2: will see, is one of a sort of group of
Speaker 2: legendary Latin American or Latin and then American writers. He
Speaker 2: was Puerto Rican. And then they also had a couple
Speaker 2: of guys that we're going to talk about named Stregio
Speaker 2: Aragones and Antonio Prohyas.
Speaker 1: Very nice. Oh, we're going to talk about it now.
Speaker 1: So pro Hyas was the creator of Spy versus Spy, right.
Speaker 2: Yes, And one of the reasons Cuban, Yeah.
Speaker 1: One of the reasons why he was so interested in
Speaker 1: the Cold War and all of the horribleness of it
Speaker 1: and futility of it. That was basically the ultimate message
Speaker 1: of Spy Versus Spy is you know, like, yeah, you
Speaker 1: can nuq one another, but we all lose was just
Speaker 1: like that's the general theme. But because he was Cuban
Speaker 1: and because he had been expelled from Cuba by Castro,
Speaker 1: which like, man, if you were in the sixties, that's
Speaker 1: like one of the most political things you can do,
Speaker 1: be expelled from Cuba by Castro.
Speaker 2: Yeah, go to America and be famous and make lots
Speaker 2: of exactly.
Speaker 1: But he was famous already in Cuba when he showed
Speaker 1: up at the offices of MAD and apparently did not
Speaker 1: speak a lick of English, but his fourteen year old
Speaker 1: daughter did, so he brought her with him and she
Speaker 1: helped translate the interview and basically got across that her
Speaker 1: father was interested in working for MAD and Bill Gaines said,
Speaker 1: you're hired, or he probably said tell him he's hired.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. He passed away in nineteen ninety eight. Sergio
Speaker 2: Aragonis is still with us at eighty five years old.
Speaker 2: He is Mexican and was a very successful cartoonist in Mexico.
Speaker 2: Showed up in nineteen sixty two asked for prehia, saying
Speaker 2: you know, I know, you've got a guy here that
Speaker 2: could probably help interpret. Apparently that didn't work out, so
Speaker 2: He just said, all right, well, here's my cartoons, these
Speaker 2: one panels, and Mad was like, we don't really do
Speaker 2: these one panels. But then someone said, you know, I
Speaker 2: really like these. Maybe we can do Like our magazine
Speaker 2: is so chock full of stuff, maybe we can squeeze
Speaker 2: in even more by doing what's called marginals, which is
Speaker 2: in the margins of the magazine. They would sneak in
Speaker 2: these little one panel cartoons.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like just very they just made Mad that one
Speaker 1: more thing. It was just one more thing that was like, oh,
Speaker 1: this is Mad magazine, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I wonder if he also was responsible, you know,
Speaker 1: like the interstitial little cartoons of you know, like the
Speaker 1: guy sweeping up the logo of bloopers and practical jokes
Speaker 1: with Dick Clark and Ed McMahon. They were very much
Speaker 1: like that, And I'm wondering if they hired him to
Speaker 1: do that too. I hope they did, because if not,
Speaker 1: they kind of ripped them.
Speaker 2: All, you know what. I seem to remember knowing that
Speaker 2: to be true. But I'm not gonna say absolutely, but
Speaker 2: that does really ring a bell.
Speaker 1: Okay, good good, I'm glad, So.
Speaker 2: We're gonna say definitely.
Speaker 1: Maybe there's another guy too that was worth mentioning. His
Speaker 1: name was Dave Berg. He did the lighter side of
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, pretty funny, like multiple panels of you know,
Speaker 1: I guess, pretty funny stuff. The one that I always remember.
Speaker 1: His drawing was amazing too, not quite as it was
Speaker 1: much more linear and angular than more drunker stuff, but still,
Speaker 1: you know, visually interesting. There was a guy shaving in
Speaker 1: his beard and he was halfway done when his like
Speaker 1: wife or girlfriend calls from the other room, like, I
Speaker 1: changed my mind, keep your beard, and he's like making
Speaker 1: this face in the mirror. For some reason, ten year
Speaker 1: old Josh thought that was remarkable and remembered it. I
Speaker 1: don't even think I laughed at it, but for some reason,
Speaker 1: it just stuck with me.
Speaker 2: Right, It's funny how that stuff happens.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. But he apparently was the one conservative, religious,
Speaker 1: white suburban dude gentile. Most of the other well, I
Speaker 1: shouldn't say most, but a lot of the others in
Speaker 1: the whole conceit of mad especially earlier, was like Jewish. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so Dave Berg was just very much intension, I guess
Speaker 1: with the rest of the staff. Yeah, and al Jeffie
Speaker 1: said that he kind of acted like he felt like
Speaker 1: he was keeping carrying the whole thing on his back.
Speaker 2: And the magazine or just the conservative man.
Speaker 1: The magazine, like it was all him or something like that.
Speaker 1: So he seems like a pretty interesting dude. But if
Speaker 1: you remember that that comic The Lighter Side of There
Speaker 1: was very frequently a late middle aged gentleman with like
Speaker 1: a pipe and a leisure suit. Yeah, he's always being
Speaker 1: put upon by hippies. I'm under the impression that that
Speaker 1: was him doing himself.
Speaker 2: I'm trying to remember. I'm trying to remember what that
Speaker 2: character looked like.
Speaker 1: He had glasses, whitish, shortish hair, and it was everything
Speaker 1: was almost always done from the bust.
Speaker 2: Up with the pipe. Yes, okay, I'm looking at him now.
Speaker 1: I think things like Hank Hill. Yeah a little bit,
Speaker 1: now that you mention it, for sure.
Speaker 2: I bet that totally is him.
Speaker 1: So that's Dave Burg, and I think he was worth
Speaker 1: calling out for sure.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, we did mention mort Drunker, but I
Speaker 2: wanted to recognize that he passed away in twenty twenty,
Speaker 2: and I think he was in his nineties, So like
Speaker 2: these guys are living in their mid eighties to nineties
Speaker 2: and into the hundreds, not all of them, but like
Speaker 2: maybe there's something to humor and laughter, right being medicine.
Speaker 2: Who knows, But we did mention Don Martin briefly. I
Speaker 2: wanted to talk a little bit more about him because
Speaker 2: he was there from nineteen fifty six to nineteen eighty eight.
Speaker 2: Was known as Mad's maddest artist. He did. He had
Speaker 2: a very distinct style that, like you said earlier, was
Speaker 2: nothing like the sort of caricature realism of a mort
Speaker 2: Drugger or Taurus, but very distinct style. Did a lot
Speaker 2: of poem parodies, did these singld character like single page
Speaker 2: character parodies, like it would just be a big picture
Speaker 2: of like Moses and then just a bunch of little
Speaker 2: like things about Moses, like a comment on the sandals
Speaker 2: or you know how he did his nails, and you know,
Speaker 2: a line pointing to this part on Moses's body. So
Speaker 2: a lot of those, but mostly did he had these
Speaker 2: comic strips. They were he did two to three per
Speaker 2: issue and they were maybe a couple of pages usually,
Speaker 2: but it was just sort of a good old fashioned
Speaker 2: comic strip, and that was sort of Don Martin's jam.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and everybody had a very long face and very
Speaker 1: long feet. Yeah, it was just yeah, his stuff is unmistakeable.
Speaker 1: You could spot it anywhere even with your eyes closed.
Speaker 1: So the thing is, like you said, these people were
Speaker 1: living into their eighties, nineties, hundreds even, and a lot
Speaker 1: of them were working like up until very shortly before
Speaker 1: their deaths. So these people worked at this magazine putting
Speaker 1: this magazine out for decades upon decades, and as a result,
Speaker 1: Mad had the same voice like all throughout. It was
Speaker 1: just the thing that changed was the stuff that was parodying,
Speaker 1: you know. So I just think that's really cool. It
Speaker 1: also explains why in the Simpsons that when bart and
Speaker 1: Milhouse are reading Mad magazine that they're talking about Spiro
Speaker 1: Agnew and Barton Milhouse go, they're talking about that Spiro
Speaker 1: Agnew guy again. He must work there, And I remember
Speaker 1: thinking the exact same thing, because these guys are by
Speaker 1: the way, Spiro Agnew was vice president to Nixon, right.
Speaker 2: Just a I remember that's how that name exactly.
Speaker 1: Yes, for sure, me too. I knew that name for
Speaker 1: a good six seven years before I knew who he was,
Speaker 1: and that that was like this kind of unspoken, unwritten
Speaker 1: tradition for kids that started reading it in like probably
Speaker 1: the early eighties onward, because these dudes were still talking
Speaker 1: about spear Wagnu in like nineteen eighty six.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's no reason that a twelve year old in
Speaker 2: the mid eighties should know anything about spiritual now.
Speaker 1: But I just thought that Simpson's joke was just dead on.
Speaker 2: That's pretty good. I don't remember that joke, but that's awesome.
Speaker 2: So another thing we need to talk about is a
Speaker 2: very big lawsuit. They were no stranger to lawsuits. They
Speaker 2: were no stranger to the FBI kind of sniffing around
Speaker 2: every now and then because they were subversive and counterculture,
Speaker 2: and so the FBI of course would always be interested
Speaker 2: in that. But a big lawsuit happened in nineteen sixty
Speaker 2: one when Mad released a special called sing Along with Mad,
Speaker 2: which had twenty song parodies popular music, and the first
Speaker 2: exhibit in the trial was a musical salute to a hypochondriac,
Speaker 2: sung to the tune of Irving Berlin's A Pretty Girl
Speaker 2: Is Like a melody called Luella Schwartz describes her malady.
Speaker 2: So the estate of Berlin was not happy about this,
Speaker 2: sued and the judge, and this ended up being a
Speaker 2: landmark decision because it went all the way to the
Speaker 2: Supreme Court, like any any satire and that we you know,
Speaker 2: enjoyed today, we can kind of trace back to this
Speaker 2: lawsuit where a judge said, as a general proposition, we
Speaker 2: believe that parody and satire are deserving of substantial freedom
Speaker 2: both his entertainment as a form of social and this
Speaker 2: is a key part, and as a form of social
Speaker 2: and literary criticism.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Mad magazine did that boom, So yeah, the Estate
Speaker 1: of Irving Berlin didn't know who they were taking on,
Speaker 1: but that's.
Speaker 2: Pretty cool and they're taking on freedom.
Speaker 1: Right, Dave. Dave traces that straight to weird Al Yankovic,
Speaker 1: which I mean, that's a pretty obvious example. Like his
Speaker 1: parody music, you can like he can just do that
Speaker 1: apparently he asks typically, but weird Al to bring it
Speaker 1: full circle is a huge Mad fan. Not that surprised.
Speaker 1: Sure who made it onto the cover in twenty fifteen,
Speaker 1: and it was one of those rare covers where alfredy
Speaker 1: Newman's expression is different. He actually looks concerned and weirded out,
Speaker 1: being close to weird out and weird it all has
Speaker 1: the alfredy Newman expression on his face.
Speaker 2: Oh, very interesting, man.
Speaker 1: We just wrapped up like eight different parts of this
Speaker 1: episode into the one cover.
Speaker 2: I have to look that up. Mad magazine was very popular.
Speaker 2: It reached its peak in the sort of the late
Speaker 2: sixties and seventies at a circulation rate that topped out
Speaker 2: at a little more than two point one million magazines,
Speaker 2: which is a lot. It was like just behind Time
Speaker 2: and Newsweek and circulation numbers. I never really kind of
Speaker 2: knew how many people read magazines back huge. Yeah, I
Speaker 2: mean two point one in circulation is there's a lot
Speaker 2: of folks reading that.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think people really kept eating like news Newsweek
Speaker 1: in Time and US News and will report until the
Speaker 1: early early two thousands, like magazines worth thing until then
Speaker 1: in the internet said I got this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And that's sort of you know, the story of
Speaker 2: MAD to a large degree. Even though their readership did
Speaker 2: slip after the nineteen seventies, I think it was probably
Speaker 2: doing all right in the eighties. And Dave makes a
Speaker 2: great point that like everyone probably says, you know, my
Speaker 2: five or six years with Mad were the best, because
Speaker 2: those are the ones that you knew and loved so much.
Speaker 2: But I think we all know that the eighties Mad
Speaker 2: magazines were the best ar away and you know, they
Speaker 2: screwed everyone. They didn't pick sides obviously they were you know,
Speaker 2: lefties in general, but they would they would make fun
Speaker 2: of all politics. But you know, as with all magazines,
Speaker 2: it would eventually dwindle. They tried to save it at
Speaker 2: various points. I remember when they moved to LA in
Speaker 2: the late twenty teen, I knew a few people, like
Speaker 2: they basically hired a new staff of like kind of
Speaker 2: cool young comedy people, and I knew a few of
Speaker 2: them that ended up working for the newer iteration of Mad.
Speaker 2: But sadly that wouldn't last too long either, Right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, who anybody you want a name check? I'm curious.
Speaker 2: I'm trying to think. Oh, Brian Possain worked for him,
Speaker 2: I think, and then well that's true, saying's like, all right,
Speaker 2: you're a little older. Ali Gertz she did I'm not
Speaker 2: sure if she still does it, but did a Simpsons
Speaker 2: podcast for Max Fun and as a singer sort of
Speaker 2: song parody person herself, and met her to Max Fun.
Speaker 2: She co hosted a trivia with me. Ali's great. She
Speaker 2: was one of the editors. And then there was someone
Speaker 2: else too. I knew, and I was just they were
Speaker 2: all very excited, you know at the time obviously to
Speaker 2: sort of take on this huge mantle like comedy brand.
Speaker 2: But you know, with these huge corporate mergers a time
Speaker 2: Warner I believe own them in the two thousands, they
Speaker 2: merged with AT and T and that was sort of
Speaker 2: the death knell.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and so finally in twenty nineteen, Mad magazines stopped
Speaker 1: publishing original content. They still put out issues once in
Speaker 1: a while, and if you look at the cover of
Speaker 1: the issue, you're like, oh, this is new, Like they're
Speaker 1: parodying everything everywhere all at once. But or say, like,
Speaker 1: what was another one? Oh, I can't remember right now,
Speaker 1: but current scept Westworld, right, but that West World issue
Speaker 1: was all about tech. So they would go back and
Speaker 1: look through all the archives and find some good stuff
Speaker 1: about tech, put it all together in a compilation issue,
Speaker 1: then slap like a current thing on the cover. That's
Speaker 1: what they're doing today. So there's still that's got to
Speaker 1: be a pretty fun job going through the Mad archives
Speaker 1: to pull together new issues compilation issues.
Speaker 2: I know a couple of guys who might be pretty
Speaker 2: good at Yeah.
Speaker 1: But that's the state of Mad today. Hey, for sure,
Speaker 1: and I wanted like seeing what happened to Mad or
Speaker 1: where it is today really kind of drives home what
Speaker 1: our colleague Jack O'Brien did for Cracked. Cracked had gone
Speaker 1: the way of Mad easily in the nineties, like long before.
Speaker 1: While Mad was still doing pretty good, Cracked had just
Speaker 1: kind of limped off and was just a brand somebody
Speaker 1: owned somewhere. And apparently Jack went to the owner, found
Speaker 1: out who owned it, and went and said, hey, can
Speaker 1: I try to revitalize Cracked on the internet, and whoever
Speaker 1: owned it said do your best, and he did, Like
Speaker 1: Cracked the website like just kind of blew up and
Speaker 1: introduced the whole new generation of people that Cracked.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was great. Hello, Jack listened to the daily
Speaker 2: es Eyite guys, he's in Miles, been doing that show
Speaker 2: for a while.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they've been at it daily for a long time.
Speaker 2: You've been a guest more than once, and I've never
Speaker 2: been two times.
Speaker 1: I'm remember of the two timer club.
Speaker 2: That's right, I'm a no timer. Mad TV is something
Speaker 2: we should mention that ran for fifteen seasons, believe it
Speaker 2: or not. And I watched at first from ninety five
Speaker 2: to two thousand and nine, and they had little nods.
Speaker 2: Alfredy Newman was there early on for a few seasons
Speaker 2: Spy versus Spy. They would do these little animated spy
Speaker 2: versus Spy shorts. But it was it was a good
Speaker 2: show man and they and if you look at their
Speaker 2: roster of people like well, a lot of them went
Speaker 2: on to be big, big names in comedy Ike Barnholds,
Speaker 2: Deborah Wilson, Nicole Sullivan, of course, the great Alex Borstein,
Speaker 2: Orlando Jones, Will Sasso. It's where Key and Peel met there. Yeah,
Speaker 2: Andy Daly, Terran kill him, just like a sort of
Speaker 2: a who's who of comedy people.
Speaker 1: Okay, great?
Speaker 2: Yeah, So did you never watch that?
Speaker 1: Really? I mean here or there?
Speaker 2: Oh it was good.
Speaker 1: It was not in my wheelhouse at the time. I
Speaker 1: don't know what I was into, but it wasn't that.
Speaker 1: It might have been like when I would have watched
Speaker 1: it would have been during a time when Saray Night
Speaker 1: Live was actually good, So I might have been watching that.
Speaker 1: Or I'll bet I was watching Mystery Science Theater three
Speaker 1: thousand instead. I'll bet that's what I was watching.
Speaker 2: Were you only allowed one comedy show?
Speaker 1: Okay? I had a lot of self discipline back then,
Speaker 1: and I was only I only allowed myself one comedy show.
Speaker 2: No, that's good stuff.
Speaker 1: So you got anything else about Mad Magazine?
Speaker 2: No, I mean that's that's the briefest of overviews that
Speaker 2: this is one that you know, we could go on
Speaker 2: for days, but we'll keep it at an hour.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we'll keep it in an hour, and we'll always
Speaker 1: keep Mad Magazine in our hearts.
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 1: Since Chuck said, that's right everybody, that means it's time
Speaker 1: for listener mail.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna call this a Lady Trucker or Lady Trucker,
Speaker 2: Lady Trucker one more time. Hey, guys, love the show
Speaker 2: and listen to it at least three or four days
Speaker 2: a week. I was listening to the Trucking episode on
Speaker 2: my way to work. Really loved it. I work for
Speaker 2: a three p L third part party logistics company, and
Speaker 2: we are basically a company that rents truckers to move
Speaker 2: shipments for our customers, basically where the middleman. The industry
Speaker 2: is currently only made up of thirteen point seven percent women,
Speaker 2: And there's a really cool organization called Women in Trucking.
Speaker 2: You can find Women in Trucking dot org. Their mission
Speaker 2: is to help bring more women into the industry and
Speaker 2: help them overcome any obstacles in their paths. The company
Speaker 2: I work for is designated a women in Trucking company,
Speaker 2: with over half of our staff, including the owner, being women.
Speaker 2: The women are so supportive of one another and make
Speaker 2: sure to help each other out whenever possible. It's a
Speaker 2: really great industry to be a part of, and groups
Speaker 2: like this help to make that possible every day. I
Speaker 2: hope there are some young women out there who were
Speaker 2: listening to your episode and started thinking about joining this field.
Speaker 2: Trucking used to be just for men, but it's for
Speaker 2: us too. Keep up the great episodes. And that is
Speaker 2: Amanda from Pittsburgh.
Speaker 1: Amanda, what a great email, and yeah, shining some light
Speaker 1: and some quarters we weren't fully aware of in the
Speaker 1: hopes of luring people to those new quarters.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So, if that peach your interest and you're a woman,
Speaker 2: you can check out Women and Trucking dot org or
Speaker 2: maybe read the article how female truckers are Changing the
Speaker 2: industry that is on Dat dabt dot com and that
Speaker 2: might further peak your interest, because hey, you can make
Speaker 2: a hundred grand a.
Speaker 1: Year from my as well. Thanks again, Amanda, and thanks
Speaker 1: to everybody who writes in on a regular basis or
Speaker 1: even one time. We always appreciate your emails, even if
Speaker 1: we don't get a chance to read them on the
Speaker 1: air or respond. We here you and we appreciate you.
Speaker 1: So never forget hashtag. Never forget that. If you want
Speaker 1: to get in touch with this, like Amanda did and
Speaker 1: like everybody else does, you can send us an email,
Speaker 1: send it off to stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 2: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
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