Mad also inspired local attempts at the same irreverent humour. Being spoofed became a badge of honour, and on the honour roll were Bruce Springsteen (featured, obviously, in his sleeveless T-shirt), Keanu Reeves in his Matrix overcoat, and a very normcore Jerry Seinfeld. “This Magazine is Revolting… Against Conformity” the April 1960 cover screamed. They offended so many people and sentiments, the magazine issued apologies almost as much as they published stories. Mad started out as a comic book, with editor Harvey Kurtzman writing practically every story. Capitalism was an exciting, job-generating path to bliss. Patriotism was being wielded into a witch-hunt for Communists. Cold War paranoia meant you couldn’t quite believe everything in the news. Where Doordarshan and All India Radio touched upon what was happening in the great out-there, Mad told you what to think about it. At a time when gifts of Kraft, Tang and Toblerone were so highly prized, Mad was where that same Western world was freely criticised. In ’70s and ’80s India, back issues of Mad – battered, dog-eared, back cover vertically creased – were a bonanza at the raddiwala. The cover marked the show’s obsession with gore and death. The Walking Dead (Dec 2011): Neuman featured as a skeleton, with zombies eating away at bits of him as he grinned his ‘What Me… Worry?’ smile. He was featured on the cover, having just pulled out Alfred E Neuman’s missing middle tooth. Weird Al (April 2015): Al Yankovich, the boss of parody songs, took over one issue as guest editor. Miley Cyrus (Feb 2014): When the popstar, known until then as a squeaky clean teen, debuted a bold new look, Neuman captured the fun in the magazine’s iconic annual Dumbest Events issue. The tagline: ‘Take your kids to work every day’. This edition featured the US President, his daughter Ivanka and her husband Jared Kushner at the Oval Office. It’s the kind of take on the hit Netflix show that pokes fun at everything – man, monster and mystery.ĭonald Trump (Aug 2017): Mad’s Trump-related art could fill a book.

Stranger Things (Dec 2017): Starring Neuman as Eleven, and featuring a story about a “boy who goes missing until he gets found”.

And there was Spy Vs Spy, that iconic wordless comic strip featuring identical black and white Zoo-Zoo-like secret agents locked in a perpetual, futile battle of one-upmanship.

Where other magazines had a centre page folding out into a poster – a Playboy nude, a Sports Illustrated hero, a National Geographic map – Mad’s back cover could be folded in to turn an innocuous drawing into a snarky new picture. No one, not the Pope, nor Obama, nor Madonna’s unborn baby, was above a round of heckling. On every cover, Alfred E Neuman was reinvented, dressed as the target of the month. It fearlessly pulled the pants off everyone in politics, pop culture and popular imagination. Mad was a wicked cool magazine that felt like a comic book, read like a graphic novel and was simultaneously silly, irreverent and sharp. What on Earth is everyone upset about? Gather ’round millennials it’s story time, as they say on Snapchat. Special issues will be produced using older material. Last week, Mad announced that August will be its last issue in print. The magazine’s popularity peaked in 1974, when Trump would have been in his late 20s and Mad hit its highest subscriber tally (2.8 million readers in the US). Trump was referring to the freckled, gap-toothed, big-eared bumpkin who had served as the mascot of Mad magazine since 1952.

Real life alfred e neuman