MAD’s future? DC COMICS boldly decides…to kick the can down the road
Quarterly?! They’re turning MAD Magazine into a Quarterly? I confess that I didn’t see this coming myself — but I should have; it’s exactly the sort of middle-of-the-road “weasel out” that executives in soulless media behemoth corporations specialize in! It’s like declaring a “trial separation” instead of a divorce. It’s like saying “Let’s date other people” when you really just want to break it off.
They’re also ceasing publication entirely of MAD Kids and MAD Classics; and permanently laying off “several” MAD staff. (And probably losing the interest of many of the remaining Usual Gang of Idiots; with 66.6 percent fewer Art or Script pages to sell?!! Hey, everybody’s got to make a living!)
Quarterly publication is going to be a disaster for a humor magazine like MAD! Just when they’ve been getting pretty good at shrinking their “topicality lead-time” (did you see how much Pres. Obama material was in the current issue, #498; that went to press a little over a month after the election!). From now on, with 3 months between issues, even the biggest and most satire-worthy news events are likely to get ignored. (“Will readers even remember this 3 months from now?” “Will it be totally irrelevant by then?”). I’m guessing that this will lead to even more “old, familiar MAD-style” pieces than ever. (“You KNOW you’re HAMSTRUNG as Humor-Magazine Editors WHEN…”) And, thus, making MAD even more of a “museum piece,” appealing mainly to those who LIKE it “1965-style!” But, new & younger readers they need to survive? Eh…not so much.
(BTW: Does anyone even know of a Quarterly magazine that’s successful? Are there ANY Quarterly magazines on the newsstands?)
Here’s my prediction: a year or two from now, after having done everything in its power NOT to give it a chance to survive, DC COMICS will announce that, “having given it every chance to survive,” we are ceasing publication of MAD Magazine.
Hey Mike, good to find your blog here. Always thought you were one of Mad’s best writers - up there with Jacobs, Debartolo and Koch. You and Devlin kept Mad going in the 90s and 00s.
Anyway - this is sad news. Quarterly means as you said “we’ll give you another year or two before we pull the plug”.
Im not as big a Mad fan as I used to be but you cant help but feel a little melencholy at the news.
I don’t know….after checking this blog for several days and no new posts I assume Mike is also going to a quarterly schedule of posting.
The quarterly lead time will be just fine for movie parodies, as most do not see movies until they have gone to DVD or blu ray these days anyway.
I always thought one idea behind Mad Kids was to give themselves more license to be a bit more adult in the regular mad, but I don’t think they were.
They should be; if it is truly too adult it will just go over the heads of the younger readers.
I don’t know of any quarterly magazines being published today. But back 50 years or so the most successful comic publisher in the world was Dell Comics, and the vast majority of their books were quarterlies. Of course, that was two or three generations ago, when it was no big deal to spend a dime for a funnybook, and Howdy Doody didn’t have to worry about topical humor. I haven’t read MAD regularly since the early 60s so I guess I’m part of the problem. I just had a difficult time adjusting to the Feldstein brand of humor after Kurtzman left. I still thought it was funny, just not AS funny. Even so, if T-W does cancel the book I’ll be sorry to see it go. It was always a comforting moment to spot the latest issue of MAD when I did my grocery shopping, even if I wasn’t buying it.
The movie satires will be fine. Infact maybe we’ll see more movie satired than we have recently.
If they want to stay current, its a no brainer which films will be hits and worth planning a satire for before release.
This Spring they can cover Watchmen and perhas Fast and Furious or Monsters Vs Aliens.
Summer - its all about Transformers 2, Wolverine, GI Joe, Terminator Salvation and Harry Potter 6. After the fact they may find themselves satirising Public Enemies and Inglorious Basterds.
Holidays they have Avatar.
There are dozens of magazines published quarterly, the most notable of which is possibly 2600: The Hacker Quarterly. They tend not to be the kind of magazine that depend on timeliness or topicality, but that doesn’t been such a magazine can’t work.