As a boy I was an avid reader of MAD Magazine. I was obsessed with the artwork of Jack Davis, Mort Drucker and George Woodbridge in particular and how good their caricatures were. Much of the humour probably passed over me at the time but, like another favourite from the 1970s; MASH, I learned to appreciate it in later years.

The 1970s was THE decade for disaster movies and MAD were quick to rip them apart with rapier wit and brilliant artwork. From The Towering Inferno to Airport 1975 and The Poseidon Adventure to Jaws,

For me it was a time just before video became a thing and with three television channels the likelihood of seeing some of these films if you missed them at the cinema was slim. So I ended up with a slightly warped sense of some of these films!

No MAD cover was complete without the appearance of Alfred E. Neumann, that kid with the rosy cheeks and devilish grin who never quite looked like anyone you had ever met before. And the covers were often glorious in their ingenuity, humour and artistic quality. The artists at MAD always managed to get that balance right between life-like and caricature in an art form which is notoriously underrated.

Political and social art is sadly no longer the force it once was, it was used to brilliant effect throughout the twentieth century, no politician was exempt from satire, written or drawn, no conflict without a foil to the propaganda. That, of course, has been replaced by angry replies on Twitter/X, some are very humorous but does the GIF compare to the cartoon, will books be written about GIF’s through history? Probably not. So here’s to MAD Magazine and its band of merry contributors.

Further reading:

The Books of MAD Magazine

Death of Mort Drucker

One Person’s Satire….

Long Live Satire

Remembering Vicky