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What, Me Worry? The Art and Humor of Mad Magazine

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Re: What, Me Worry? The Art and Humor of Mad Magazine

#91

Post by linsomniac »

CobrastanJorji wrote: post #49

Are there any Mad Magazines of today? Are there some publications that we'll look back on in 20 years and say "that really shaped humor and it's crazy how many interesting people seem to have all read this when they were young?" Are they online?

There is Mad Magazine reboot from DC Comics, comes out every other month. I just ordered it yesterday (in response to this HN thread), so we'll see how it is. I figured for $20 for a year it was worth a try, see what the son thinks of it. https://www.dc.com/mad

Re: What, Me Worry? The Art and Humor of Mad Magazine

#92

Post by lmm »

KerrAvon wrote: post #75
peppermill wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole take-down is great: https://www.nplusonemag.com/issue-1/the-intellectual-situati...

You know this is also satire, right?

If it is (and I'm not convinced), what difference does it make?

Re: What, Me Worry? The Art and Humor of Mad Magazine

#93

Post by kopirgan »

As a kid I used to enjoy MAD as my dad used to bring copies from his office library. Long before I even knew who Tintin or Asterix were, I knew Neumann. Lol

I bought a 6-7 CD set of all MAD issues from start to early 90s but it doesn't run anymore, not in Windows 11. Even the software was well designed with funny instructions and commands

Re: What, Me Worry? The Art and Humor of Mad Magazine

#94

Post by pfarrell »

DonHopkins wrote: post #15
bluedino wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hah! Mad Magazine was one of the things my mother refused to allow me to checkout from the library.

The Simpsons did the best tribute to Mad that captured its true essence: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jzu4qILQqpA

“New Kids on the Blech” is spot on.

Re: What, Me Worry? The Art and Humor of Mad Magazine

#95

Post by empath75 »

CobrastanJorji wrote: post #49

Are there any Mad Magazines of today? Are there some publications that we'll look back on in 20 years and say "that really shaped humor and it's crazy how many interesting people seem to have all read this when they were young?" Are they online?

Magazines are basically dead. It's YouTube channels that are molding kids humor now.

Re: What, Me Worry? The Art and Humor of Mad Magazine

#96

Post by pimlottc »

arp242 wrote: post #72
pimlottc wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh, we used to type in BASIC programs from magazines back in the 1980s and I don’t ever recall seeing any kinds of checksum. We would often resort to printing out the code and visually comparing line by line against the magazine.

The first edition of MSX Computer Magazine from 1985 has them, and I doubt they were the first or invented it: https://www.msxcomputermagazine.nl/archief/bladen/msx_comput... Perhaps it was less common in other countries? Things were a lot less global back then and things operated more on a local level.

We mostly had Family Computing magazine. I looked up an issue from 1985 with one of my favorite type-by-hand games, Hit or Miss [0], and no sight of a helpful checksum.

To be honest, the idea of it would have blown my mind back then; the idea that your BASIC code is just a text file that can be processed by other programs is something that would never have occurred to me.

https://archive.org/details/FamilyComputingIssue041983Dec/Fa...

Re: What, Me Worry? The Art and Humor of Mad Magazine

#97

Post by Propelloni »

jansan wrote: post #79
ethbr1 wrote: post #2

Through my childhood, my mother always found a copy of MAD to give me for Christmas. Honestly, it'd be great to have more physical zine-style humor back in the US zeitgeist. It's important to laugh at the issues of the day, while also thinking and doing something about them. Satire and laughter is a critical antidote to the 24/7 BREAKING-NEWS panic-fear response that all-day news so often inspires. PS: Also, long liv…

There was a Spy vs. Spy game on the C64: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yu2e866bEcM

There were actually two Spy vs. Spy games. The second one was named Spy vs. Spy II. Genius!

Re: What, Me Worry? The Art and Humor of Mad Magazine

#98

Post by scottyah »

criddell wrote: post #11
ethbr1 wrote: post #2

Through my childhood, my mother always found a copy of MAD to give me for Christmas. Honestly, it'd be great to have more physical zine-style humor back in the US zeitgeist. It's important to laugh at the issues of the day, while also thinking and doing something about them. Satire and laughter is a critical antidote to the 24/7 BREAKING-NEWS panic-fear response that all-day news so often inspires. PS: Also, long liv…

In case you didn't know, The Onion is back in print: https://membership.theonion.com/

It seems to me that the Onion had a schism and split into the Babylon Bee and this new, very political version. I ended up unfollowing them on Instagram when it was (in my opinion) just thinly-veiled hate-based politics.

Did anyone experience something similar in the last year or so, or am I the one changing?

Re: What, Me Worry? The Art and Humor of Mad Magazine

#99

Post by helpfulContrib »

frankfrank13 wrote: post #14

I love MAD magazine. I remember my mom half-jokingly telling me to stay away from my older cousins' copies as a kid. Funny now, considering how tame it is compared to Tiktok/twitter humor. But as a kid it felt otherwordly. Anyways here's the example MAD folding picture from the exhibit when its folded -- https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url=https%3A%2F%2Fbtwberkshi...

[dead]

Re: What, Me Worry? The Art and Humor of Mad Magazine

#100

Post by webdoodle »

ethbr1 wrote: post #2

Through my childhood, my mother always found a copy of MAD to give me for Christmas. Honestly, it'd be great to have more physical zine-style humor back in the US zeitgeist. It's important to laugh at the issues of the day, while also thinking and doing something about them. Satire and laughter is a critical antidote to the 24/7 BREAKING-NEWS panic-fear response that all-day news so often inspires. PS: Also, long liv…

> It's important to laugh at the issues of the day

Is it? In Robert Heilein's Stranger in a Strange Land one of the central conflicts involves the main character who's grown up on Mars, where there are no humans and no humor. He is thrust into Earth, humans and humor and makes a bold observation about humor: We only laugh at things that cause pain. Whether physical, mental or spiritual, all humor is reflecting on pain.

So with that in mind, laughter starts to look a lot more like a psychological hiccup. Or a reaction to pain. That's all without getting into who's doing the laughing and who's being laughed at. They aren't mutually exclusive, but they have different psychological impacts on each participant. Does the person being laughed at, want to be laughed at? Perhaps to them its another form of social control...

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