The 40 Years of Comics Project Friday Magazine 22: Mad #174, April 1975

Somehow, this is one of only two MAD magazines I have in my collection. I've never been a huge fan of the publication, but it still seems strange that I'd have so little of such an important comics title.

It was really quite amusing, but the humour seems to verge on cliche at times. I know that this is because MAD created the humour that became the cliche, but I wonder if sticking with something that you're good at is always the best decision. Again, I've only read this issue and one or two others, but the humour doesn't seem to change much, even in the space of 40 years. Hopefully more contemporary issues of the magazine aren't quite as sexist as this one was - the treatment of women in the 1970s was sexist, you say? I know - I'm just as shocked as you are. If there's one thing that MAD has always been very good at, it's reflecting the tenor of the times, and this issue does it well. At least it's all there to laugh at, even the sexism. But don't get me started on the subtle jabs at queer people...

I think one of the things I have to be wary of is that magazines like this one are far more focussed on contemporary events and culture than many of the comics from the 70s that I've read. And, as such, there's going to be a lot more cultural dissonance in each issue. It's not just that people don't have cell phones or the Internet - cultural values and ideologies have shifted significantly since this time. I guess the saddest part of that is when I read something in an older publication like this one and it seems like it could have been written today. Plus ca change, etc., etc.

Onward (check it out! I got a magazine posted!)

The 40 Years of Comics Project - The Weekly Graphic Novel: Week 19 - The Fourth MAD Declassified Papers On...Spy vs Spy, November 1974

Like many, I think my knowledge of MAD Magazine, and of the "Spy vs Spy" strip is a vague memory of childhood, of finding these comics that were larger than comics and reading them because there was nothing else to read. I'm not saying this is everyone's experience of MAD, and there are definitely those for whom the magazine was their gateway to sequential art, and for whom it holds a warm and nostalgic place in their hearts. I'm not one of those people. I never really got MAD. It just seemed like it wanted to make fun of things, and, most importantly, of things that I really loved. Their movie and comic book parodies, at the time, made me angry. I took my superheroes very seriously back then. I take them seriously now, too, of course, but with a little bit of ironic detachment.

This book is pretty neat. The artwork gets downright trippy at times, which explains the popularity of the magazine with the hippies of the late 60s and early 70s. I can see the underground comix movement growing quite obviously from these sarcasm-dripping strips. It's even better when you find out that artist Prohias was accused of being a spy for the CIA in Castro's Cuba. The foolishness of political oneupsmanship has never been quite so blatantly stated as these comics.

One thing I do find curious about this collection is the re-formatting that must have taken place to turn the comic strip into a paperback book. I've a few comic collections like this, and I have to start thinking about how the re-organization of the original comics affects the telling of the story. These strip seem to follow a relatively sequential process, so putting a single panel on a single page is no big deal. But were the panels and the contents of the panels to start interacting with one another in a less sequential manner, I'm curious as to how the strips would be adapted. Or if they would. Perhaps there are strips of "Spy vs Spy" from this era that do play with the form, but just couldn't be translated into the paperback medium.

I've about 15 old MAD paperbacks, so expect more of these in the future. Onward!