MAD Magazines (and Moghul Library, Hyderabad)

Comics were an important part of my childhood like my first blogpost which was dedicated to ACK comics showed.

MAD called itself a ‘magazine’ and was fairly popular both in the US and India and this success in itself was a surprise.

 

In terms of slotting MAD actually was more for a mature audience – kind of teens and above (IMO) and you graduated to it – I would put it a level above the war & Sci-fi comics (which I didn’t take a liking to).  

But this was the surprise.  

MAD magazines were un-believably creative, and I think it was the first introduction to American daily Life as it was, warts and all.

All of this was possible due to their editor/ founder William Gaines who appeared as a character frequently lampooned by one of the cartoonists.  His main talent was hiring this fabulous bunch of talented and ultra-creative writers and cartoonists (referred famously as "the usual gang of idiots").

Most pieces were done by teams – mostly working as a pair, sometimes more.  One would write the ideas and the other would draw it.  A few of them were talented enough to do a lot of it on their own.

We moved to Hyderabad from Mumbai around late 1970s and we became a member of a small library called Moghul Library run in a small garage by a family of Iranian origin I think. This was located near the Liberty Talkies (now shutdown) and TTD temple road and was about 1 KM from our road. The proprieter (we just called him uncle) used to be friendly and turned on the charm when we joined but he and his dad would be crusty and suspicious when we became regular members. They would shout at us when we returned books late and would check some books page by page if there were any missing.  Most of the crowd was South Indian kids (mostly tam brams) and bored housewives with very few college students. But the mix of books in that tiny garage had everything from novels to comics to magazines and one of the best shaping influences in our childhood.  We  discovered MAD magazines thanks to Moghul library.

For us MAD magazine turned out to be a time machine that showed us how the US had changed in the last couple of decades. Uncle had MAD magazines from the last two decades, plus MAD also would re-cycle episodes from the past which clearly looked like they had aged well/ badly but you could see how the daily lives from foods to dress styles had changed over the years.

I think where MAD stood out was that most of the humour was relatable to a global audience – I couldn’t place the political references, but it certainly displayed that in the US you could get away with just about anything (lots of jokes about Nixon).

It was one of the first introduction to how American lives were organised and you got introduced to popular references about Mexicans, Italians, Jews, African communities and the humour would gently touch upon what the stereotypes were (sometimes contradict/ disprove them).

IMHO MAD magazine impacted the minds of many Americans and a global audience too. Perhaps the best as in the best credit that MAD magazine can receive for shaping an entire generation (and a few more) is that they shaped how films were being reviewed.  Almost all the Hebrew terms you read now including by Indian reviewers (yes, *eye roll*) like Schlepp, Schtick etc. might have appeared in MAD magazine first.  The magazines would do a hilarious review of the film through a piece lampooning the film and it would be in almost every case better than the film itself.  The piece would lay bare the glaring plotholes, but especially in how the film was trying (unsuccessfully mostly) to manipulate the viewers.  (Kinda similar to the the SCARY MOVIE series which were spoofs of the horror genre, but MAD magazine went many notches above them).

In a way MAD magazine complimented the readers for their choice.  IMHO It was expected that the readers had a fairly above-average/ high (ahem, pardon my lack of modesty) level of intelligence, so they never bothered spoon-feeding the readers and would dish out jokes straight and fast. This worked brilliantly because you were good if you got it – and that became the acid test for the work to make it to the magazine which helped maintain standards.  Very few of the jokes were straightforward as in direct/ slapstick/ physical comedy but had to be inferred or worked out and needed a bit of lateral thinking sometimes. 

And all of this was done by keeping it clean.  Even today if I read the back issues – the adult jokes were spare – almost negligible, but when they came in would seem offensive.  I didn’t notice a single mention of the F word today, which itself qualifies as an achievement)

It’s been a long time (yes you could have guessed my age by now) but here are a few of the cartoonists whose work I can remember.

Possibly one of the most outstanding and prolific cartoonist was one of Mexican/ South American origins – Sergio Aragones. And the thing was you were likely to miss the majority of his pieces. While Sergio did a lot of regular columns/ pieces he was most popular for creating the sprinklings of “Easter Eggs” across the magazine. These were small cartoons that you were likely to miss that would appear in the corners or in the fold of the magazine or a part of the bleed of a poster.  I can’t read any of his cartoons without using my reading glasses or a magnifying glass but they were bloody good.

Another regular column was by the bespectacled Dave Berg who had a regular comment on the daily lives and lifestyles of the urban/ suburban families and would bring a gentle smile. Dave normally made an appearance at least once in each column.

One of the most creative guys was Al Jafee who both wrote and did some fabulous work that qualified as masterpieces.  There was a regular series – the first time I discovered what comebacks and put-downs were – and the writing was superlative in terms of recovering from insults or giving it back – the best LIP ever.  

 

Al Jafee was the master of the back cover "FOLD IN"– the first thing you looked at in the magazine. The inner back cover would have this elaborate picture with a headline and sub-text printed all over it, and at the bottom panel a short instruction on how to fold the paper to discover the real story.  Some of them were fabulous comments on what the government was doing or what the politician actually meant – both the pictures and the text would converge to show a completely contradictory image. 

Like I said, they were priceless masterpieces.

There were the regulars – the reviews of films and TV series I remember clearly and a feature called Spy vs. Spy where two enemies sparred with each other in different situations – reminiscient of the Cold War and would take turns in who’d get the better of the other.

But the one feature that was unalterable was the cover page which always featured a freckle-faced goofy gap-tooth smiling character called Alfred E Neuman who became part of American legend and folklore.  He was one of the most recognised characters and would make appearances within the comics too – either in a popular poster ‘Alfred E Neuman for president’ or a ‘Who, me?’ response in a cartoon situation.

Now when I look back at it, MAD had that rare sense of maturity and ‘woke’ness that most comics missed. They rarely catered to stereotypes (made fun of them and contradicted them) – women were rarely sex objects and most importantly I can’t remember any offensive material about the LGBTQi community in their pages.

And that perhaps is one of the best testaments to MAD was that it was fitting that Pete Buttiegig was one of the running candidate for the primaries of the presidential elections. The first openly gay and married candidate which kind of marked a turning point when he found acceptance among a significant section.

But Pete was more famous for something else – as a child he was the model for Alfred E Neuman, the mascot of MAD magazine!

And someday hopefully Pete should become president. But it goes to show MAD were on to something when they ran ‘Alfred Neuman for president’ in their magazines.  😇