A recent article in the New York Times (I'd link to it, but can't because I'm not a subscriber, as I am cheap) reports that venerable humor publication Mad Magazine is going to a quarterly publishing schedule (that's 4 times a year to you.).
In publishing circles, this is akin to a young Al Pacino kissing you on both sides of your face. Which means that soon Mad magazine will not exist, at least not as a news stand presence. I find this prospect rather disturbing. Although I'm sure DC / Time Warner, who own the property, will slap up some lame website in order to maintain the copyright. Whoopee.
Have we truly come to this? I realize that Mad hasn't stayed at the editorial heights it did as a magazine in 60's & 70's, but still - it's just plain reassuring to see it for sale on magazine racks. Who hasn't read or owned an issue of Mad Magazine at some point in their life?
I ask you - who will the leaders of tomorrow learn from, if not from Al Jaffe, Mort Drucker, Don Martin, Jack Davis and Paul Coker? From whence will youngsters develop their much-needed sense of societal irreverence? Surely not from hours spent whacking hookers with a pipe in Grand Theft Auto XXVVI? I guess "South Park" sort-of fills the Mad satire void, and that's all well and good, but a kid can't roll up an issue of South Park and carry it around in his back pocket or pass it around the classroom to his buddies.
I'm going to go hug my Alfred E. Neuman statue now, and dream of a world cooler than this one.
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