Heart of the City by Steenz for November 08, 2010

Uh-oh … comic geek alert!

This is a rerun from 2000.

I Mort Drucker still at Mad (or, I suppose…was he still there in 2000?) I stopped reading it in the mid-80s, and then picking up my cousins copies in this decade, I never saw a single feature or artist I recognized….

I’ve thought that too. On the other hand, we may be seeing pretty much the same thing with more mature eyes and sensibilities. If we could meet our younger selves, maybe we would think they were pretty grotesque and childish….

The artwork was the main reason I was such a fan of Mad. I am sorry to hear it has deteriorated. I will have to check out a copy and try to find some redeeming quality. It was such a big part of my childhood and helped me grow into a dysfunctional adult with a truckload of issues—psychological, not Mad.

I’m probably ‘dateing’ myself, But I miss Don Martin and his onomatopoeia’s. ssshreeEEEE! Oh! Excuse me but teas ready. klalip,KlalAP, klalip,klalAP

I don’t think it’s being mature, Scaaty_423; I think the art quality has gone downhill. I was in art school during the 90s and the professors were still pushing Mad as a source of great inspiration. They’re not talking about it anymore. p.s. LOVE J.D.’s excitement, Dood!!

I’ve been with MAD since it was called “Panic”. Time passes though, and so do the great men and women of our past…

Spy VS Spy, MAD margins, and Al Jaffee. From Wikipedia: In 1994, Brian Siano (The Humanist) discussed the eye-opening aspects of Mad:

“For the smarter kids of two generations, Mad was a revelation: it was the first to tell us that the toys we were being sold were garbage, our teachers were phonies, our leaders were fools, our religious counselors were hypocrites, and even our parents were lying to us about bleeep near everything. An entire generation had William Gaines for a godfather: this same generation later went on to give us the sexual revolution, the environmental movement, the peace movement, greater freedom in artistic expression, and a host of other goodies. Coincidence? You be the judge.”

In 2007, the Los Angeles Times’ Robert Boyd wrote, “All I really need to know I learned from Mad magazine”, going on to assert:

“Plenty of it went right over my head, of course, but that’s part of what made it attractive and valuable. Things that go over your head can make you raise your head a little higher. The magazine instilled in me a habit of mind, a way of thinking about a world rife with false fronts, small print, deceptive ads, booby traps, treacherous language, double standards, half truths, subliminal pitches and product placements; it warned me that I was often merely the target of people who claimed to be my friend; it prompted me to mistrust authority, to read between the lines, to take nothing at face value, to see patterns in the often shoddy construction of movies and TV shows; and it got me to think critically in a way that few actual humans charged with my care ever bothered to.”

rerun

RIP Mort.