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Completely Mad - A History of the Comic Book and Magazine

Maria Reidelbach - 1991

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Thanks / Appreciation / Lewis Carroll quote / Contents --- Aragones marginals, notes, quotes / cover images, 1 - 303, appear in order throughout

Chapter 1 - Americana for a Dime

  • Max Gaines and the invention of the comic book
  • The industry evolves into a popular machine
  • 1940's 'True' crime and the rise in violent themes
  • Max partners with Harry Donenfeld to form the All American line
  • Max simultaneously publishes Educational Comics
  • 1945 Max sells out and retires (for two weeks)
  • Max revamps the Educational Comic line
  • Max dies in a boating accident
  • Bill Gaines takes over the family business which is in a bit of a slump
  • The hiring of Al Feldstein and a stable of artists
  • Gaines and Feldstein discover a shared love for old suspense,
    horror radio programs and science fiction,
    move into that direction for their seven comic titles
  • Name changed from Educational Comics to Entertaining Comics
  • Kurtzman hired to edit the two war comics. Realism abounds
  • EC becomes a popular trend-setter in the comic world
  • Parental concern about the gore and subject matter were on the rise
The Madmen (bio):
William M. Gaines
  • Famous Funnies #1, May 1934 (cover)
  • Modern Love #2, Saddle Justice #4, Saddle Romances #11 - 1948 (covers)
  • The Vault of Horror #26 - 1952, Tales from the Crypt #25 - 1951 (covers)
  • Weird Science #12 - 1950, Weird Fantasy #17 - 1951 (covers)
  • Crime SuspenStories #16 - 1953, Shock SuspenStories #7 - 1952 (covers)
  • Two-Fisted Tales #28 - 1952, Frontline Combat #7 - 1951 (covers)
  • 'The Love Story to End All Love Stories!' - Modern Love #8 - 1950 (excerpt)
  • 'Bug-Out' - Two-Fisted Tales #24 - 1951 (excerpt)
  • 'Blood Brothers' - Shock SuspenStories #13 - 1954 (excerpt)
  • 'The Aliens' - Weird Fantasy #17 - 1951 (excerpt)
  • 'Midnight Mess' - Tales from the Crypt #35 - 1953 (excerpts)

Chapter 2 - The Dawn of Mad

  • Kurtzman, wondering how to increase his income,
    goes with Gaines' suggestion to produce a humor comic -
    Mad is born
  • After a shaky start Mad becomes popular with it's fourth issue
  • A new EC humor title, Panic, with an "outrageous" Christmas story,
    grabs unwanted attention and throws EC into legal battles
  • Frederic Wertham publishes Seduction of the Innocent,
    further fanning the moral flames
  • Gaines' appearance at a subcommittee hearing
    to defend EC backfires and public sentiment about Gaines
    and the comic industry grows more negative
  • Despite efforts to survive the backlash,
    Gaines suspends publication of most of the EC line
  • The Comics Code Authority is established;
    its restrictive nature "cleans up" the industry
  • Pagaent magazine offers Kurtzman a job working on their "slick" magazine
  • Gaines turns Mad into a magazine to keep Kurtzman
    and avoids the Code in the process
  • Mad magazine is successful but the rest of EC falters
    as new comic book attempts by the company fail to sell
  • Debts and financial failures force Gaines to
    lay off Feldstein and the rest of the staff
  • A cash infusion from Gaines' mother barely keeps EC alive
  • Gaines rejects Kurtzman's request for 51% of the magazine,
    replaces him with Feldstein
  • Kurtzman takes many of the staff away with him
    to the Hugh Hefner produced Trump
The Madmen (bio):
Harvey Kurtzman

The Madmen (bios):
Jack Davis,
Will Elder,
Wally Wood

The Madmen (bio):
Al Feldstein
Excerpted articles link to source issues:

Chapter 3 - The Kiddin' Dissuaders, or The Madmen vs. The Admen

  • "The early years of Mad coincided with
    unprecedented growth in the American economy."
  • Factory production problems were solved,
    the next challenge became convincing the public
    they needed all the "accoutrements of modern life"
  • Persuasion and salesmanship, psychology,
    research firms, motivational studies, The Hidden Persuaders -
    the new advertising science developed quickly
  • Mad sees the opening and jumps in
  • The Mad comic book ran ads like any other comic book of the time
  • The Mad comic book also ran ads for other titles in the EC line
  • With issue #21 Kurtzman and Elder parodied ads for the first time
  • Gaines moves to an ad-free format,
    "'You can't take an ad from somebody and not be beholden to them,'
    Gaines explained."
  • Feldstein hones the parodies, starts using photos
  • The staff use themselves as models in satires
  • Norman Mingo's wrap-around cover for #35
    celebrates Mad's ad parody trend
  • Nick Meglin's My Fair Ad-Man is "the story of the adman lifestyle"
  • Ad parodies diminish due to changes in Madison Avenue,
    real print ads don't have the impact they once did
  • "'Bright young people who were Mad fans went on to careers in
    advertising and wrote funny ads that were satires of themselves,'
    Meglin points out."
The Madmen (bios):
Bob Clarke,
Dick DeBartolo,
Tom Koch
Excerpted articles link to source issues:

Chapter 4 -
It's Crackers to Slip a Rozzer the Dropsy in Snide!
Excerpted articles link to source issues:
  • A way with words: 'potrzebie', 'furshlugginer', others join the lexicon
  • The Yidish base to word play colors Kurtzman's eccentric language
  • 'Melvin' made it into article titles and on to the cover of #1
  • 'Shadowskeedeeboomboom', 'Count Amisher Basketball', 'Galusha Iggy'
  • 'I had one grunch but the eggplant over there'
  • Poetry and literature takeoffs appear in the Mad comics
  • Casey at the Bat! starts the trend
  • Ernie Kovacs' first original verses show up in #31
  • Feldstein develops poetry and literature parodies into regular features
  • Parents and educators have a problem with
    New and Old Versions of Lincoln's Gettysburg Address
  • Mad's first song parodies appear in My Fair Ad-Man
  • Song parodies in Sing Along with Mad are popular
    but get Mad sued for copyright infringement
    by Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, and Richard Rodgers
  • Mad wins the right to parody songs -
    "We believe that parody and satire are deserving of substantial freedom -
    both as entertainment and as a form of social and literary criticism."
    -- Judge Irving R. Kaufman - U.S. Court of Appeals in Manhattan
  • Original songs were put out on records
    Mad Twists Rock 'n' Roll and Fink Along with Mad
  • Flexi-discs in The Worst from Mad and various Specials also appear
  • It's a Super Spectacular Day had eight different surprise endings
  • "...recalcitrant students can be interested in the classics
    through classroom readings of the Mad parodies..."
The Madmen (bios):
Paul Coker, Jr.,
Phil Hahn,
Frank Jacobs,
Joe Orlando

Chapter 5 - That's Entertainment?

  • "Television and the movies constitute a vast lode of mythology,
    as well as standards against which Americans measure themselves,
    for better or worse."
  • "For many years, the anchors of Mad have been
    lampoons of motion pictures and television programs."
  • Dragged Net! and From Eternity Back to Here!
    were Kurtzman's first full-fledged parodies.
  • While films were paid for by production companies relying on ticket sales,
    television shows, like radio shows, were created by advertisers.
  • Along with creativity-killing advertiser restrictions,
    fear of Communism shadowed the industry in the form of
    the blacklisting of key creative people.
  • Advertisers prefered promoting the fantasy of their products solving
    life's petty problems versus aligning themselves with realistic depictions
    of social problems seen in some early anthology TV series.
  • After occasional and inconsistent attempts in the Mad comics,
    the quality of the satires improved with
    the cultivation of new artists and writers
  • Many artists attempted and got good at caricature,
    but Mort Drucker became the most skilled of all.
  • More formats than just satirizing an actual movie or TV show developed,
    like Arnie Kogen's look inside Frank Sinatra's wallet and Elizabeth Taylor's purse
  • Mad artists and writers were serious critics
    capturing the "cultural context of the times"
  • Mad ran an exposé on the practice of plugging products on screen
    and got the attention of the FCC which pressured networks
  • Jewelia focused on TV's placement of a black woman within a real
    minority group: "the majority of American's don't live that good!"
  • As some Mad writers became actual Hollywood script writers,
    Mad articles appeared revealing conventions of the form
    such as A CBS-TV Summer Memo to The Smothered Brothers
  • Book! Movie! "is a savvy breakdown of the effect of the Hays Office on movies
    as well as an incisive look at the tendency of Hollywood to glamorize
    and remove sharp edges from stories"
  • Reactions of targets of Mad's satire have varied
  • George Lucas called Mort Drucker and Dick DeBartolo
    "the Leonardo da Vinci and George Bernard Shaw of satire"
    after his own legal staff threatened a suit over the Alfred as Yoda cover
  • "...to many, it has become a mark of true success
    to be in a televison show or movie lampooned in Mad."
  • Mad, itself, has appeared in TV and movies over the years
  • The successful off-Broadway The Mad Show ran for
    two years and went on to tour the country, inspired Laugh-In
  • The Up the Academy fiasco caused Gaines to remove all references to Mad
    from future video rentals, many other deals have fallen through
The Madmen (bios):
Mort Drucker,
Stan Hart,
Arnie Kogen,
Larry Siegel,
Angelo Torres
Excerpted articles link to source issues:

Chapter 6 - The Family of Mad
The Madmen (bios):
Dave Berg,
Al Jaffee,
Harry North,
Sy Reit,
George Woodbridge

Mad ESP
Excerpted articles link to source issues:

Chapter 7 - The Party's Over
The Madmen (bios):
Max Brandel,
Antonio Prohias,
Lou Silverstone
Excerpted articles link to source issues:

Chapter 8 - Alfred E Neuman: The Untold Story

  • Unflattering descriptions dominate, but this from a Look writer:
    "the lad...always manages to give a daffily Kiplingesque impression that he is
    keeping his head - a pinhead, to be sure - while all around him are losing theirs."
  • Appeared on most Mad covers since 1955
  • Some of his roles: General Patton, Uncle Sam, George Washington, Santa Claus,
    Rosemary's baby, a hippie, a high school student, Michael Jackson,
    an Italian organ grinder, an Indian guru, Tut-Ankh Neuman, Alfred E. Tojo,
    Alfredo - Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle
  • Running for president in each election since 1956 -- "You could do worse, and always have!"
  • Famous motto: "What - me worry?" and lots of quotations in the masthead over the years
  • First appearance is on The Mad Reader without a name
  • Kurtzman inserted him into articles, put him in the cover border artwork
    and featured him on the back inside cover of issue #27 for sale for 15 cents on better paper
  • After going by Melvin Coznowski, Mel Haney, the "What - Me Worry?" kid,
    Alfred E. Neuman gets his name in Feldstein's first edited issue #29 Biggest Year in Mad History
  • Feldstein hires Norman Mingo to give Alfred "personality and impish lovable character" -
    debuts on issue #30, sets the bar for all future depictions of Alfred
  • Image used by editorial cartoonists over the years to epitomize stupidity
  • The offices received tons of mail from people remembering where they first encountered Alfred,
    even had comparisons to a young Prince Charles who denied it in a letter
  • Late 1950s, Mad is sued for copyright infringement but prevails after being able to prove
    the Alfred image existed well before the claimants' images
  • Kurtzman had received the image from Ballantine Books editor, Bernie Shir-Cliff
  • "...no story yet told has satisfactorily established the origins of the boy. The earliest known
    reproduction of the face is from the late nineteenth century, yet he is already unmistakably Alfred."
  • "...he seems to fit, perfectly, the role of the trickster, a powerful character who appears
    the world over in some of the oldest and most popular folk tales... The trickster loves to see
    pomposity pricked, but he can be quite reckless, often getting into bad trouble himself...
    the side effect of the trickster's shenanigans is often creativity..."
The Madmen (bios):
Frank Kelly Freas,
Norman Mingo
Excerpted articles link to source issues:
  • First full-page appearance (Wally Wood art)
  • Photo of Prince Charles in letters section
  • Comic Strip Heroes Taken from Real Life
    (written by Frank Jacobs / Wally Wood art)
  • Mad Magazine's Ideal Presidential Candidate
    (idea by Lou Silverstone / Max Brandel research)
  • Early Alfred appearances on postcards, political ads, envelopes -
    many images collected and featured on Mad letters pages
  • Charles Schulz draws Alfred into his 1973 Peanuts strip
  • Alfred as World War II C-47 bomber nose art
  • As mascot for Bob Adamick's twenty-six-hour cafe
    on postcards and matchbook covers from the 1940s
  • His-and-her versions on souvenir cards 1930s and 1941
  • National Geographic photo of Austrian carver
    Johann Mairhofer-Irrsee creating an Alfred-like festival mask in 1960
  • Sarie of the 1930's Grand Ole Opry comedy team,
    Sarie & Sally, wears an Alfred broach
  • 1939 Happy Jack soda bottle label and 1924 Cherry Sparkle pitchman
  • Several versions from 1910s and 1920s including ads for painless dentistry
  • 1909 Broadway ad for The Newlyweds' Grown Up Baby
  • 1902 mascot for the "Modern Art and Novelty Company"
  • 1904 ad for the musical Maloney's Wedding Day
  • 1901 assistant birdwatcher in The Condor ornithologist's journal
  • Button, odd 1902 picture, "It didn't hurt a bit" mug
  • An example of a Fredrick Opper drawing featuring Alfred
  • Pictured in a 1905 sample book of typefaces from possible pre-1890 woodcuts
  • Earliest verified image on an ad for
    Atmore's Mince Meat Plum Pudding from 1895

Chapter 9 - MAD Made

  • A visit to the 485 Madison Avenue offices...an Alfred statue greets you in the waiting room
  • Co-editor John Ficarra's neat office contrasts with the chaos in the hallway
  • Associate editors Sara Friedman, Charlie Kadau, and Joe Raiola are stuffed in another office
  • Co-editor Nick Meglin's office is impressively messy with stacks of papers everywhere
  • The largest room in the place is the art department complete with touches of Lenny Brenner
  • Bill Gaines' corner office has airships hanging from the ceiling, a King Kong in the
    window blocking out the daylight and a relatively clean desk sitting in the disarray
  • The EC days are recounted at 225 Lafayette Street... the elaborate process of producing
    the Mad comic began with Kurtzman's controlled writing and story layouts which kept the
    artists in line and moved on to Marie Severin's innovative coloring techniques
  • John Putnam is hired as art director as the comic becomes a magazine, stays on after Kurtzman
  • Jerry DeFuccio, Nick Meglin, and Lenny Brenner round out the early team under Feldstein
  • From ideas to finished magazine, seven months of work find their way to the pages
  • "Mad has always tested the outer limits of printing equipment." -- George Dougherty
  • Gaines' business philosophy is eccentric: publishes every 45 days,
    still on volume one after 300 issues, no advertising and no promotion in other media,
    no reader surveys, subscriptions are not discounted much, doesn't badger the subscriber
    with repeated notices, pays freelancers quickly, treats the staff to great trips around the world
  • For tax reasons, Bill sold to a diversified company... a long line of acquisitions and mergers
    followed until Time Warner became owner -- "Mad fits like a square peg in a round hole"
  • Mad has succeeded businesswise due to keeping the price low, the paper cheap, the staff small...
    also, repackaging original material in paperbacks and specials costs little to produce
  • The practice of buying and owning contributed art and writings outright has been a
    controversial practice... Don Martin parted ways with Gaines over it
  • Gloria Orlando, Lillian Alfonso, Dorothy Crouch, Anne Gaines and Chris Gaines noted
  • Gaines now entertains licensing proposals, after years of not being enthusiastic about
    merchandising, because circulation numbers have fallen with the teenage population decline
  • Annual Christmas parties, Mad trips, get-togethers after the trips encouraged comaraderie
Mad Imitates Life:
from its earliest days,
Mad always wanted
to be a magazine

The Madmen (bio):
Nick Meglin

The Madmen (bio):
John Ficarra

The Madmen (bio):
William M. Gaines
(Part 2)
  • 1963 staff photo features Nick Meglin, Jerry DeFuccio, John Putnam, Bill Gaines,
    George Woodbridge, Al Feldstein, Lenny Brenner, and Arthur the plant
  • Photo of the group set to visit Haiti for the first Mad trip in 1960
  • Dave Berg draws Bill Gaines as a Mad zeppelin
  • Antonio Prohias gets as far as the airport gates in the 1968 trip to Italy
  • Cartoonist PROfiles cover #7, August 1970 - Sergio Aragones draws the Mad offices
  • Paul Peter Porges - A Mad Look at Us Roomies - with Bill Gaines sharing a bed
  • Jack Davis draws Bill Gaines, George Woodbridge, and Dick DeBartolo in Tahiti
  • George Woodbridge's commemorative coin honoring Gaines' attempt at snorkeling in Tahiti
  • Al Jaffee thanks Bill for the 1973 trip to Mexico with cartoon of Bill as a museum piece
  • Don Martin draws a dignified Norman Mingo in Bermuda
    trying to get through a meal with Lenny Brenner and Bill Gaines
  • John Putnam's redrawing of the map of Mexico highlights Madmen activities
  • Angelo Torres - The Assault of the Matterhorn by The Gaines Expedition of 1987
  • Jack Rickard - A Kaeopectate bag for the 1972 trip to Spain and Morocco
  • Paul Coker, in Copenhagen, Morocco, Mexico, and Tahiti, pictures himself with various animals
  • Photo of Bob Clarke, Frank Jacobs, John Putnam, Jack Davis, and Dave Berg on their way to France
  • Bob Clarke sketches in Venice photo
  • Photo of Stan Hart, George Woodbridge, Al Jaffee, Nick Meglin in Tahiti
  • Greece photo features Sergio Aragones, Paul Coker, and Irving Schild enjoying grapes
  • 1987 photo of Bill and Anne Griffiths' wedding day reunites many Mad men

Chapter 10 - Sheer Madness

  • EC Comics was part of the group of dissonant voices encouraging nonconformity,
    rebellion, and escape from "middle-class commonplaceness and respectability."
  • Gaines and Feldstein created their stories for their own enjoyment,
    "virtue did not have to triumph" -- flew in the face of the new middle class which
    had worked hard to achieve its stability, respectability and integrity
  • Mad may have been overlooked by the critics because it didn't seem as threatening
    as the horror and crime comics, but it was just as subversive in many ways
  • "...readers who took the time to read, reread, and decipher Mad
    felt like insiders in a new and unconventional adventure."
  • The same social issues once addressed in the banned comics
    were given new life as satire in the pages of Mad the magazine
  • Mad made fun of both sides of a polarized society, the readers, and itself
  • "The usual gang of idiots" had a "fink" boss, Bill Gaines, and was read by
    "clods" who purchased Alfred E. Neuman portraits to line bird cages and wrap fish
  • Most of Mad's contributors were first or second generation immigrants,
    so they had the outsider's perspective which helped shape their articles
  • "For many years, Mad was the only semi-sanctioned place where kids could read
    about sex, divorce, alcoholism, drugs, corruption, other religions and lifestyles,
    then considered over the heads of, and therefore off-limits to, healthy children."
  • The FBI visited the offices and told them to lay off the J. Edgar Hoover pranks
  • Mad misjudged its readership when it published the middle finger cover
  • "We reject the insinuation that anything we print is moral,
    theological, nutritious, or good for you in any way, shape, or form."
    -- Gaines and Feldstein in the introduction to Vernard Eller's The Mad Morality
The Madmen (bios):
Sergio Aragones,
Don Edwing,
Don Martin,
Paul Peter Porges

Potrzebie, Hoohah!,
Blab!, and Zap
- the rise of fanzines
and alternative comics
Excerpted articles link to source issues:

Appendix A - Mad Books

Appendix B - Mad Specials and Freebies

Appendix C - Foreign Mad

Appendix D - Mad Bibliography

Mad Index
Click for a list of MAD Books - hardcover and otherwise