What, Me Worry? MAD Magazine Going Quarterly

theodp writes "MAD Magazine is about to put out its 500th issue, but starting with its April publication, the mag is cutting down to only four issues per year. The feedback we've gotten from readers,' quipped Editor John Ficarra, 'is that only every third issue of MAD is funny, so we've decided to just publish those.' MAD Kids and MAD Classics are ceasing publication entirely. Keep up the what-me-worry game face, Alfred!"

Comments

the timing makes sense

[circletimessquare]

being as their mascot, and their mascot's philosophy, just left the white house

Re:the timing makes sense

[mobby_6kl]

Speaking of the whitehouse mascot, I think their latest cover makes the whole magazine worth it, no matter what the actual content is.

Re:the timing makes sense

[Lord Apathy]

Once again Mad nails it right on the head. I'm going to get that issue and frame it.

Magazines are dying as a format.

[onion2k]

Given the amount of time we (by that I mean "I, and I assume everyone else is like me") spend online actually interacting with other people interested in a similar subject to ourselves it's no wonder we don't spend money on magazines any more. Unless the mag can survive on ad revenue alone, on transition to an online format that affords it's readers some interactivity then it'll die off. Obviously some titles, like Old Person Weekly or Luddite News, that cater for a non-tech-savvy audience will weather it better because their audience won't jump ship, but even those ones will be at the mercy of advertisers wanting to push their costs down.

I see a future without hardcopy magazines at all.

Re:Magazines are dying as a format.

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed. However, I dislike the fact that I will have to take my laptop into the bathroom to replace the magazines :P

Re:Magazines are dying as a format.

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

Yeah but quite frankly, I'd rather have hardcopy. When my computer dies, or when I'm not around electronic devices to entertain me, having a couple of back issues of say, EGM(RIP), or MAD was a great way to kill time.

Re:Magazines are dying as a format.

[operator_error]

I see a future without hardcopy magazines at all.

Odds are that you don't commute by rail. Commuting by rail has its advantages, and the magazine format coincides nicely with a hard day's use of the laptop. Especially given boot times, logins, possibly a connecting train. You get the idea.

Also, like in the movie The Accidental Tourist, its often times nice to have reading material on public transport. Gives your eyes a socially-acceptable place to focus.

Re:Magazines are dying as a format.

[thetoadwarrior]

Magazines are still perfect for the toilet, travel and even night time reading.

The problem is Mad Magazine used to be good. It used to push the edge a bit and have good writing.

Now it's just a bit bland and tiresome. I, for one, would have never thought they'd do a kid version of Mad. That just goes to s how how much it's change, imo.

Re:Magazines are dying as a format.

[Anonymous Coward]

Dying is too strong a word. The format is being refined. The wheat is being separated from the chaff.

It's the magazines that use filler info in order to sell advertising that are losing out to the internet. These magazines aren't offering any substance of their own, so they're losing out to the free websites that are doing the same thing for less. Their entire cost is based on their method of distribution. The internet comes along with virtually free distribution and no cost to subscribers, it's a no-brainer that the magazines are going to tank.

The magazines I still subscribe to are primary sources of news, information, or analysis that cannot otherwise easily be had online. They all have online components which are available for free or a small extra charge. They carry few or no advertisements and recognize that their subscribers are their customers rather than the product (e.g. stories are not split up to cram more ads in better positions).

These magazines are more expensive, but you're paying more for the content than the delivery mechanism. These magazines can continue to thrive both as magazines and as websites because they have a monopoly on their content and their distribution costs are much smaller relative to their operating cost than the filler mags.

Re:Magazines are dying as a format.

[AuMatar]

I used to be a subscriber. Not for a few years now. The quality of their writing has gone way downhill, even back when Gaines was still alive. Without him it's gone straight down the drain. When the moved the magazine to color and started accepting advertisers it just seemed to lose its soul.

Re:Magazines are dying as a format.

[mad_minstrel]

The last time I read a hardcopy of a magazine I was really upset Ctrl+F and AdBlock weren't working and I couldn't click the links.

Re:Magazines are dying as a format.

[Ihmhi]

What the fuck.

This is the first I hear of EGM closing. A general letter out to the subscribers would have really been appreciated. I had like a year left on my subscription. ):<

Re:Magazines are dying as a format.

[jalefkowit]

Odds are that you don't commute by rail. Commuting by rail has its advantages, and the magazine format coincides nicely with a hard day's use of the laptop. Especially given boot times, logins, possibly a connecting train. You get the idea.

Meet Kindle, which answers all of your concerns.

Re:Magazines are dying as a format.

[afabbro]

Odds are that you don't commute by rail. Commuting by rail has its advantages, and the magazine format coincides nicely with a hard day's use of the laptop. Especially given boot times, logins, possibly a connecting train. You get the idea.

Meet Kindle, which answers all of your concerns.

Well, except that nothing I want to read is published for it. I guess I could change all of my reading habits just to be cool, though.

Re:Magazines are dying as a format.

[porcupine8]

Meet the average American, for whom a $350 device on which to read his $20/year magazine subscription (minus the color photos that are half the point of a magazine) is not a budget priority.

Re:Magazines are dying as a format.

[Amazing Quantum Man]

Whatever happened to Mad TV?

It's still there on Saturday nights, but it sold out a long time ago.

Re:Magazines are dying as a format.

[Cruciform]

I was "diagnosed" with irritable bowel in '91. Basically the doctor listened to the symptoms and proclaimed that was it. I got scoped a little while later but he didn't see anything to prove him wrong.

So while it has gotten worse every year there was nothing that could really be done about it. The next family doctor I had just reiterated the first and said that there were no real effective treatments, just live with it and try to avoid triggers.

He retired and I have a new doctor now. Oddly enough, I started dating a nurse and she wrote down a whole battery of tests (that I was never given) and told me to take that to the new doctor. I did. Turns out it's not IBS after all. Now I'm going through more tests to find out why my white blood cell count is high, and B12 is low.

How many doctors have you seen regarding the diagnosis? Out of all the tests I was given, I only had to pay $60 for one (Canada), but if you're in the US I'm thinking it would be about 3 grand for all of em. Parasites, white blood cells, full blood workup, the whole bit.

IBS is the diagnosis they give when they don't want to work for a real cause.

Re:Magazines are dying as a format.

[Lew-the-nerd]

Just be careful of the staples.

My favorite part

[broothal]

One of the things I always enjoyed from MAD was the fold-in images (they have a name, but that escapes me right now).

I found this overview - very interesting: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2008/03/28/arts/20080330_FOLD_IN_FEATURE.html

Re:My favorite part

[retech]

I hope this means that very flexible displays are coming soon!

Re:old fashioned, old schmasioned

[rm999]

But the target audience has changed. 1950-1980s Mad was actually pretty edgy for its time. Today, it seems kind of... tame and unfunny, especially with all the internet has to offer our 8 year-olds.

Re:This sucks.. I hope they make the mag 200+ page

[jfim]

From TFA:

On the bright side, anyone with a subscription to Mad will find that it now lasts longer.

evolve or die!

[crazybit]

publications like MAD will need to evolve into new communication media in order to stay in business. They already have the formula, the characters, the jokes and the artists... just throw in some 2D animators and a few web programmers and voila'! cash made out of internet traffic.

Something curious is that Manga Magazines like Shonen Jump do not appear to be lowering their sales.

Re:evolve or die!

[thetoadwarrior]

Technology won't fix this. Unfunny is unfunny whether or not it's online and the cost of putting all their old but good material online would probably kill them.

It just desperately needs a better "usual gang of idiots".

Spy vs. Spy

[retech]

Since Obama said OK to Warrantless Wiretapping it kind of put a kink in the whole Spy v. Spy thing permanently. Now it's just sorta ___vs. Us.

Re:Spy vs. Spy

[pnevin]

"Spy vs Valerie Plame" just doesn't have the same ring to it

Easy solution to their finance worries.

[lxs]

Just put all the back issues on youtube.

I stopped reading it

[mangu]

I stopped reading Mad when Don Martin died. His cartoons were pure, unadulterated, fun. He had that rare insight that humor must be fun, it needs not always carry a transcendental message...

Re:I stopped reading it

[Aladrin]

Why'd you stop reading it when he died, rather than when he stopped making comics for Mad? Wouldn't that have made a lot more sense? I mean, there was 13 years in that period that you read Mad that he didn't contribute a single thing.

Sad sign on the status of comedy

[SoundGuyNoise]

It's unfortunate that a staple of American culture has gone in this direction. For years, Mad Magazine was one of the last holdouts to not run ads, but now they do.

Since then, the quality of the humor has dipped significantly, but it's still better than other junk that passes for comedy these days. They're even now recycling classic "Lighter Side Of..." segments in their issues.

Whomever tagged this "nothing of value was lost" needs a history lesson. Mad has its original roots as a satire of horror comics today. Mad Magazine still exists, and so do a lot of your tenets of free speech with comics and video games, because Bill Gaines stood up to those who wanted to censor horror comics, against those who were "thinking of the children." Does that sound familiar to anyone else?

60 Minutes has several profiles on the writing staff over the years. There are numerous books by the same writers about working at Mad and Bill Gaines.

If Mad Magazine goes under, we lose an American icon.

Re:Sad sign on the status of comedy

[popmaker]

On the lighter side though, we now have www.cracked.com. Cracked used to be a kind of a Mad rip-off, but is now doing fantastic as an internet magazine.

Re:Sad sign on the status of comedy

[DerekLyons]

Whomever tagged this "nothing of value was lost" needs a history lesson. Mad has its original roots as a satire of horror comics today. Mad Magazine still exists, and so do a lot of your tenets of free speech with comics and video games, because Bill Gaines stood up to those who wanted to censor horror comics, against those who were "thinking of the children."

Methinks it's you who need a history lesson.
 
Bill Gaines lost that fight and comics were censored for decades because of it. His 'standing up' accomplished nothing. Bill was forced to concentrate on Mad because the other comics in his line were censored out of existence.

Re:This sucks.. I hope they make the mag 200+ page

[Ron Bennett]

8 more pages per issue (48 to 56) is what I've read.

The change to quarterly shifts their nearly inevitable demise a little further into the future; to next year, if they're lucky.

Ron

My impression of mad was always

[sleeponthemic]

The "parody" pieces were rarely funny but stuff like the "lighter side of..." was always quite decent.

If they had a daily "lighter side of" (or perhaps spy vs spy) online I'm sure they'd build up a decent following and stream for ad impressions. Comic magazines like Mad and Viz (British) are missing the electronic boat.

Re:old fashioned, old schmasioned

[TheKidWho]

No, the worlds 8 year olds are on /b.

Got help the next generation...

MAD Super Special

[Brett Buck]

They only put out 12 of those a year! Oh, wait...
  That does it, I'm switching to "Cracked".

        Brett

Re:Quality versus quantity, perhaps.

[mikelieman]

If you only go bi semi-annually, are your really bi?

The original folks are long gone.

[Fantastic Lad]

I loved Don Martin's stuff as a kid, but it's aged beyond relevance. Husbands don't come home and hang their business hat, (business hat??) and say, "Honeeeey, I'm Hoooome!" anymore. The whole psychological connection of the strip is lost. It didn't age well.

Spy vs Spy suffers from the same thing. The cold war is OVER. --Once brilliant, that strip is about as relevant and engaging today as Beetle Baily. (Which also once connected with people in a relevant way but which has become meaningless and prosaic.)

The only guy who still has the chops to fit today is Aragones. His "Side Lines" and basic style still shine.

I can't even remember any of the other guys doing stuff in Mad, but the collection of that bunch all at the same place and time was what floated Mad Magazine. The last issue I looked at, a couple of months ago as it happens, was just a bunch of re-tread attempts by no-name artists to copy old formulas.

It read the way the new Kermit sounds. False and without spark or meaning.

Sorry, but artistic collectives must die or change with their creators passing. The only way Mad could shine again would be if they hired on a bunch of luminary geniuses versed in comic observation and satire, (of the Jon Stewart caliber), who also happen to be able to draw in awesome, engaging styles. Not only that, but the editors would have to be willing to allow such new talent to re-invent the whole look of the magazine so that it reflected themselves. --Because anybody willing to copy a dead format and a dead style which last-gasped sometime around the 1980's is certainly not going to be particularly luminary. Any real genius would have been driven mad (ahem) over the restrictions and left asap.

And Intelligent cartoon satire hasn't vanished. There are new guys doing awesome things which don't try to be Kermit, but which are unique and genuinely exciting. XKCZ, for example, is fresh and new and. . , bloody cynical. (Imagine; there was a time when Beetle Baily was just as electric!) The big difference today is that the luminaries aren't all gathered in one convenient place anymore, and certainly not exclusively on paper. You have to go looking. --That's the part which I find most difficult. I enjoyed concentrations of work which I knew everybody else was experiencing. There was something tribal and culture-defining about it which I really drew energy from as a reader. These days, it's easy to feel disconnected.

Thank-goodness for Slashdot, eh?

-FL

Good old days

[lawpoop]

For all you guys out there pining for the fjords, just go back and read some of those classic, black-and-white, pre-advertising MAD magazines. A lot of the material was *terrible*. I'm thinking particularly of the movie parodies. They were just frame after frame of bad pun or joke. But hey, at age 9, it makes you feel very grown up and rebellious to be reading such critical literature.

What you are experience is the nostalgia of youth. Watching an 80s transformers cartoon today, at my age, just doesn't invoke the sense of awesomeness it did when I was young. The cheesy plots, dialogue, ans sometimes crappy animation shine through.

Cracked magazine, however, seems to have come of age in the internet. The magazine always seemed like an un-funny knock off of mad magazine back in the day. Now, I find their online top-ten lists hilarious.

So wake me when it is $50 and non-DRM...

[FatSean]

...and can reproduce the same color, format size, and dot pitch of the average full color magazine.

Oh, and I won't care if I drop it or lose it rushing for my connection.

Kindle is a nice toy...but really...that's all it is so far.