Today, comics are the source material for movies that gross billions of dollars. But in the 1950s, they were generally perceived by adults as garbage that could brainwash children, so some people even started burning them.
Then, against the current, it appears in 1952 When Tales Calculated to Drive You MAD — Humor in a Jugular Vein, three years later re-baptized as Mad magazine, something that had never been seen: a comic that parodied comics, seen as purveyors of violence and degeneration that contributed to crime, homosexuality, and the spread of communism, but at the time of its release, Mad magazine scoffed at all of that as well, marking the path of the publisher's strength in the postwar collective of the U.S.
Hand in hand harvey kurtzman, a talented writer and artist who had finished military service and was seeking to become a professional illustrator, hired by Maxwell gaines, Founder of EC Comics, while the war of South Korea In full swing, the work of this groundbreaking magazine began, which unlike many others of the time, specialized in telling the experiences of its fans in the military and stories that examined the human price of war.
In the spirit of telling different stories, an urgent need for the year 1952, the first issue appeared on the streets of New York in October, scripted and edited by Kurtzman, and retailed for 10 cents. Gaines printed 400 copies for its launch and looked forward to hearing from distributors and retailers that it was a success, but it wasn't.
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And it is that at the time of its premiere, it is not that the magazine suffered from good content capable of attracting the reader, rather it was dealing with the orthodoxy of the times that was demonstrated in the spring of 1954, when the Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency of the Senate of the United States held hearings in the city of New York on the threat of comics, largely motivated by the notoriety of one of the best-selling books of the year, that of the psychiatrist Fredric Werthham, Seduction of the Innocent, which argued that "chronic stimulation, temptation and seduction by comics (...) are factors that contribute to the maladjustment of many children."
For the event, Gaines was called to testify and refuted the arguments of Wertham's book, who that same year, in June, released his edition with the subtext: What we publish is miserable garbage! Fortunately, it's cheap but miserable junk! In the style of a literary magazine, so that readers embarrassed to read this comic on the subway could make people think they were reading intellectual material instead of miserable rubbish.
William M. Gaines on strike. Source: Popperfoto / Getty / The New Yorker
After several meetings, fights, criticisms and legal subpoenas after having made fun of Superman, Mad became a monthly magazine and expanded nationally, gradually clinging to the influx of postwar thinking into suburban life in New York. USA, which was also very deep into the psychoanalytic movement exposed through gentle icons such as Marlon Brandon.
Soon, the post would have a mascot added to your team: Alfred E Newman, the illustration of a striking-looking young man with his disheveled hair, uneven ears and hollow teeth that began to circulate with the publicity material, and who would guide the acid and irreverent publication that was being cataloged as insipid, vulgar and cynical, or , a post with a "wild consent to the oppression of official culture, "already by those most angered by it, to one that would pave the way for the satires of the 1960s generally credited with undermining the conformity of the years of Dwight D. Eisenhower.
Like art queer, hip-hop or Playboy, formed in 1953 by Hugh Hefner who invested damaging insults in empowerment badges, the defiant "garbage" label of Mad he fought for the language of cultural disdain; they subverted the comic form into a dominant ideological weapon, attacking everyone, both markets and industries as well as the Generation Beat, a Richard Nixon y John F. Kennedy and Hollywood.
As the world fell back to war and an uncertain nuclear age, the magazine, with Alfred at the forefront on every cover, which like the Mona Lisa and Che Guevara stood up to and above other global cultural figures such as Darth Vader y Donald Trump, defined the input of editorial as one of the social weapons most important to the audience against the thoughts of limitless power of the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, not only locally, but with editions in Latin America as well.
However, the only certain thing is that time does not stop for anyone, and despite its powerful cultural impact, Mad magazine disappeared in July 2019, since, DC Comics, its long-time owner, decided to stop this publisher, arguing that the internet had overtaken it. And although the journey was long and undoubtedly fruitful, her disappearance felt like leaving the house we grew up in for the last time.
Source: Mad magazine
Mad he had once been indispensable to children, not necessarily because of art or writing, but because he was a spokesperson for them. It could be that now everyone speaks for themselves, showing that curiously the magazine was killed by the very thing it was making fun of.
The truth is that in times so irreverent and difficult to understand, where it seems that Alfred's stupid face could appear in any corner (or to apply for a popular position), the magazine only ends up showing how deep it has gotten into the veins of the cultural collective, revealing themselves again through so many visual or letter projects that have had to merge with the internet.