MAD MAGAZINE: Avacado Rules

[starwolf_oakley]

I originally wanted to post this as a reference to director J.J. Abrams and his son Henry writing a Spider-Man comic. In this case, it is comedian Jim Gaffigan and his son Jack writing a two page "bit" for MAD Magazine. As MAD Magazine is coming to an end, it will tie to that as well.





A celebrity and his son are doing something for a long running comic magazine. That's it. That's the joke.
Nothing about how fans thought Marvel was going to print an adaptation of the never-made Sam Raimi's Spider-Man 4. That's something else.

Comments

[alicemacher]

"That's it. That's the joke." Apparently, yes. :I

In the second half of the fifties, when MAD switched to magazine format (in order to retain Kurtzman, who'd gotten offers from that market), celebrities such as Ernie Kovacs and Steve Allen contributed scripts, while Tom Lehrer authorized the illustration of lyrics from his first album. The results... meh. Kovacs's and Allen's humour was staid and safe even by 1950s MAD standards, let alone today's. And although most of Lehrer's compositions are still funny today, they're much better appreciated by listening to the songs rather than reading the lyrics, even with illustrations.

[crinos]

IIRC, the reason Mad converted to magazine format is to escape the ravages of the CCA, which the comic industry adopted in order to A) avoid goverment oversight following the furor after lying piece of shit and frightened old man Frederic Wertham wrote his massive pile of lies and bullshit "seduction of the innocent", and B) to kill EC, which was killing Marvel and DC in sales and whose crime and horror comics were the primary target of the CCA.

[alicemacher]

It's a common belief that EC switched MAD to a magazine format in order to evade the CCA, but it's incorrect. As EC publisher Bill Gaines explained in an interview with Steve Ringgenberg:

"I changed it because Harvey Kurtzman, my then editor, got a very lucrative offer from... Pageant magazine, and he had, prior to that time, evinced an interest in changing Mad into a magazine. At the time, I didn’t think I wanted to because I didn’t know anything about publishing magazines. I was a comics publisher, but remembering this interest, when he got this offer, I countered his offer by saying I would allow him to change Mad into a magazine, which proved to be a very lucky step for me. But that’s why it was changed. It was not changed to avoid the Code. Now, as a result of this, it did avoid the Code, but that’s not why I did it. If Harvey had not gotten that offer from Pageant, Mad probably never would have changed format."

Source: CBR, Comic Book Urban Legends Revealed #45.

[alicemacher]

As for the claim (originating, as far as I know, with Frank Miller), that EC titles were outselling those of other publishers and that's why those publishers created the CCA... I suppose it's possible. It would've been helpful if Miller had provided actual comparative sales figures from the period in question. What we do know is that, as you say, publishers wanted to avoid government oversight of the industry, in the wake of the Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency hearings.

[bravest_spinja]

The only contemporary reference I could find to EC's sales figures was testimony by Helen Meyer (then president of Dell Comics, which, in fact, WAS the most successful publisher of the 1950's) that EC's books only sold about a fourth of of Dell's, which would put it in the 250,000 copies range (an enormous figure by today's standards, but for reference, this would also be New Warriors numbers in the early 90's). Obviously this a big heap of "consider the source", (Dell famously distanced itself from the other publishers, and that their wholesome reputation wasn't even worth risking from a financial perspective), but if true, wouldn't even put a dent in DC and Archie's flagship titles. (DC and especially Archie were the real power of the CCA. Marvel was kind of an opportunistic bottom-feeder, and was quite possibly running mostly inventory at the time.)

Interestingly, Lev Gleason Publishing tends to get largely left out of the "EC was nailed to the Cross of the Comics Code" narrative. At the time, crime comics were mentioned in the same breath as horror comics, and usually first billed. "Crime Does Not Pay" supposedly sold a million copies a month, and Lev Gleason himself was said to have some heavy socialist leanings, not a great way to be popular in the 1950's .

[alicemacher]

Dell was in fact the only major publisher, in the early days of the Comics Code Authority, to opt out of it successfully.* It did so because many of its titles were adaptations of literary classics which, the publisher acknowledged, might include content the Code wouldn't allow. It succeeded because its reputation as a publisher of "kid-friendly" licensed Disney, Warner and other titles made newsstands willing to carry their books.


*EC, after outright cancelling its crime and horror titles in early 1955, did try releasing its "New Direction" titles without the Code seal for a few months, but relented when many newsstands refused to carry them. Then, the following year, a particularly ludicrous CCA demand was, for Gaines, the last straw and he stopped publishing comics altogether.

[bravest_spinja]

I think you might mean Classics Illustrated, which was also able to opt out of it. (Not that Dell didn't adapt literary works, including, amusingly enough, Dracula*, just that I don't think that was the company's backbone the way the more contemporary licenses were.)

*In fact, because Dell never had to tow the Code line, its successor/schism Gold Key was able to publish a Dark Shadows comic book in the sixties. When the Code was first revised, the supernatural was allowed as long as it had a "strong literary tradition*, which meant all kinds of arbitrary distinctions.

[bradygirl_12]

Avocados? Tom Brady of the New England Patriots would approve. ;)*

*Tom's diet includes avocado ice cream.