Monday, Jul. 07, 1958
Maddiction
The reading primer ("Easy little steps for muddy little feet") is completely Mad: "My teacher is Miss Furd. I tell the school board Miss Furd is a Commie. Miss Furd is through in this town . . . This is Bobby Smith. He is our playmate. Bobby sells reefers to the other children in school."
Through such zany mockery of the solemn, the pretentious and the inane, the bimonthly Mad is compiling a growth chart that is no laughing matter. For its sixth-anniversary number out last week, Mad printed 1,300,000 copies, a 100% increase in a year. What is more, Mad is solidly in the black though it carries not a line of advertising, has spent only $350 on outright promotion. In fact, the essence of Mad's success is its nimble spoofing of promotions of all kinds. In its parodies of advertisements and travel stickers, vending machines and lovelorn columnists, Mad is a refreshingly impudent reaction against all the slick stock in trade of 20th century hucksterism, its hopped-up sensationalism, its visible and hidden persuaders.
For its anniversary issue, Mad conjures up magazines like Caveman's Weekly (sample article: "Is the Stone-Axe the Ultimate Weapon?") and the Pilgrim's Home Journal ("I Should've Kept My Big Mouth Shut," by John Alden), gives advice on how to play golf ("The grip should be about the same as one would use clutching a dead trout"), and quotes some woman-meets-native dialogue from the National Osographic: "Evelyn stepped forward and asked in Swahili, 'What I want to know, and I want you to give me a straight answer to, is--I mean--I want to know if you really got cannibals up this way. I mean I heard the rumble. I know the story.' "
"What--Me Worry?" Most fascinating aspect of Mad's success is that its spoofs appeal mainly to teenagers. They bombard Mad's tiny editorial offices just below Manhattan's Greenwich Village with some 400 fan letters a day, wear T shirts emblazoned with the .face of Mad's grinning imp Alfred E. ("What--me worry?") Neuman, and treasure old issues like collector's items. Maddiction also has become a cult in some adult circles. Comics Ernie Kevacs, Bob and Ray, Henry Morgan and Orson Bean contribute frequently and willingly for next to nothing.
Publisher William M. Gaines, a hearty, hefty man of 250 Ibs., launched Mad in 1952 as a sideline to the comic-book business he inherited from his father, M. (for Max) C. Gaines, who started the whole industry in the early 30s when he hit on the idea of selling reprinted newspaper comic sections for a dime. Using the standard comic formula--32 pages, newsprint, four colors, a 10-c- price tag--Mad was just holding its own when Gaines played a hunch in 1955, switched to semi-slick paper and higher quality black-and-white drawings, upped the price to 25-c- and promptly had a boffo success. The magazine now clears $43,000 an issue.
Mad's booming popularity astonishes Publisher Gaines. Says he: "All I can say to explain it is something glib like, 'Everyone is under a strain, and some sort of comic relief is a good thing." If we knew exactly what we were doing right, we'd do more of it."
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