Wolf William Eisenberg died this past Thursday, May 14. Comics fans may know him better as Will Elder, one of the original MAD artists who, along with Wally Wood and Jack Davis, et al, worked with Harvey Kurtzman to make "furshlugginer" and "potrezebie" household words in the 1950s. No one could pack a cartoon panel with more gags than Elder, the exemplar of the "chicken fat" school of art.
posted on May 19, 2008 - View this thread

Longtime MAD magazine artist Al Jaffee (now 87 years old!) created the fold-in as a unique contribution to the MAD-style of satirical humor. Now the NYT has the comprehensive history online in interactive form.
posted on Mar 30, 2008 - View this thread

In all its 55 year history, MAD magazine has been known much more for media satire than political satire... anything political was often camouflaged as a movie or TV parody and generally less partisan than most. (How can you take their politics seriously when they offered Alfred E. Neuman for President?) Another thing about MAD is how rarely it goes outside its "Usual Cast of Idiots" for content. Well, things have changed, as the MAD editors used 10 Pulitzer Prize Winning Op/Ed Cartoonists to illustrate the incendiarilly-titled “Why George W. Bush Is in Favor of Global Warming”. The usually web-shy MAD even allowed the New York Times to put most of the piece online in a slideshow.
posted on Feb 5, 2008 - View this thread

No Tourists, No Artists. Tourists at Atlanta's Underground didn't realize they were working with an real live artist, but they were. Tom Richmond, Caricaturist Of The Year for 1998 and 1999, recipient of a Reuben Award in 2003 , one-time comic book creator, and frequent artistic contributor to Mad Magazine (movie parodies, mostly), supported his freelance work for almost 18 years by doing cartoons-for-hire in historic Underground Atlanta. Despite many efforts to "save" it, Underground continues to fade in popularity and the tourist traffic just dwindles on down, leaving folks like Tom no choice but to pack up their paints and leave. Tom's story makes for interesting insight into a job that most of us might take for tourist-trapping huckstery. (via Radical Georgia Moderate)
posted on Jan 7, 2008 - View this thread

Ever since the Million Dollar Homepage, the web world's advertisers and quick buckateers have gone PixelAdvertising mad. Buy building bricks and fill a room, buy desktop icons and buy even more pixels. Now roofs are the next target (literally) - where will it end?

I would offer adspace on my head, but that's already been done to death. Whatever's next? I can turn the internet off, but its starting to look like I'll have to pull the blind down next time I fly.
posted on Jan 18, 2006 - View this thread

By the way...Americans may have eaten mad cow.
posted on Nov 4, 2005 - View this thread

"I... Forgot."

Upon the death of a possible BSE cow, "the unidentified doctor preserved the brain stem sample in formalin... but then 'simply forgot' about it until mid-July." That's the reason why we're only hearing about it now. Any questions?
posted on Jul 27, 2005 - View this thread

Second US case of Mad Cow confirmed. The initial rapid screening test in November was positive, but a more stringent test was negative, and the USDA told America that the cow was BSE-free. The agency did not mention that it had skipped the Western Blot test, used in 2003 to confirm the first U.S. mad cow.
posted on Jun 24, 2005 - View this thread

The delusional world of Robert Hendy-Freegard, assasin/spy/carsalesman The tale of a power-mad car salesman. The guy managed to get so many people to do so many crazy things that I suggest you read the link for yourself. Unbelievable.
posted on Jun 24, 2005 - View this thread

The search for Alfred E. Neuman Carl Djerassi emigrated to the US after Hitler's annexation of Austria, and in his essay traces the gap-toothed Mad Magazine spokesman from his original sighting on a German anti-semitic propaganda poster (PDF).
posted on Feb 1, 2005 - View this thread

Spy vs. Spy sell out! Mountain Dew has roped in the infamous black & white spies to shill their beverage. Quicktime needed to view the commercials. [via waxy.org]
posted on Jun 28, 2004 - View this thread

Mad, Cracked, & Weirdo magazine cover archives.
posted on Sep 2, 2003 - View this thread

A Mad Parody Of The Onion Well, if this isn't Meta, I don't know what is. Certainly, we all know about The Onion (and, indeed, our consensus is that we don't post Onion links here). The fine fellows at MAD magazine have hoisted the Area Men by their own petard. I hate to say it, 'cuz I think The Onion is often quite funny, but they've got it nailed. (via Heath Row's Media Diet)
posted on Nov 13, 2002 - View this thread

Mad Magazine cartoonist David Berg dies at 81. One of the "gang of idiots" that were part of the Mad '60's: Sergio Aragones, Don Martin, Antonio Prohias, Mort Drucker, et al.

Ah, well. Another piece of my childhood slips away. What stands out in my mind was that many of his characters bore an uncanny resemblance to my neighbors. But now I'm troubled: did I have a post-modern childhood?
posted on May 25, 2002 - View this thread

BSE Inquiry report Took me the better part of two weeks of fishing around to find the online version of the £300 million U.K. report on BSE/mad-cow disease/nvCJD. BSEInquiry.gov.uk didn't work. Got this one from the redoubtable Mad-Cow.org.
posted on Oct 29, 2000 - View this thread