When Harvey Kurtzman talked William Gaines Jr. into publishing a little humor comic, they changed the landscape of comedy in America. MAD became the template for comedy going forward and bred a host of imitations. Here are some of those four-color dopplegangers.
EC even imitated MAD itself when they published PANIC, a magazine of humor by EC's other mainstay editor, Al Fiedstein.
Then in an attempt to placate censors and Kurtzman himself, Gaines decided to make the comic book a magazine. With the four colors gone, the increased size made MAD a publication alongside others targeted to an older reader. But the success of that change too sparked imitations, among them magazines by Kurtzman himself for other publishers.
Rip Off
The National Lampoon wasn't a Mad ripoff but was inspired by a much longer-lived publication: the Harvard Lampoon, founded in 1876!
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