Thursday, May 31, 2018

Selling Like MAD!


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

1 comment:

  1. 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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