Recurring features in Mad
Every issue but two of Mad from 1964 to the present has featured a Fold-in, written and drawn by artist Al Jaffee until he retired in 2020 and Johnny Sampson thereafter.
Jaffee's precise layouts sometimes include false visual cues designed to trick the reader's eye towards an incorrect solution.
Subjects commonly lampooned include medicine, office life, parties, marriage, psychiatry, shopping, school and other everyday activities.
"The Lighter Side" was more pointed in its early years, providing the sort of Americana-based humor that standups such as Shelley Berman and Alan King performed successfully onstage.
These last "Lighter Side" strips were divided among 18 of the magazine's regular artists, including Jack Davis' last original work for Mad.
These consist of reprinted Berg strips, with rewritten word balloons that change the gags to references about disease, sex offenders, corpse disposal and other unsavory, un-Berg-like topics.
Don Martin, billed as "Mad's Maddest Artist",[2] drew gag cartoons, generally one page but sometimes longer, featuring lumpen characters with apparently hinged feet.
On occasion these titles became increasingly elaborate (e.g., "One Night in the Acme Ritz Central Arms Waldorf Plaza Statler Hilton Grand Hotel", "One Hot Sunny Afternoon in the Middle of the Ocean", or "One Fine Day at the Corner of South Finster Boulevard and Fonebone Street").
For example, Dr. Phil arrives to counsel the psychologically damaged Desperate Housewives; in another spoof, the former cast of Sex and the City are hired as the new hookers for another HBO series, Deadwood.
Within an ostensibly self-contained storyline, the characters may refer to the technical aspects of filmmaking, the publicity, hype or box office surrounding their project, their own past roles or real-life circumstances, and critical analysis of clichés.
The rewritten lyrics reference both the producers' decision to create scarcity and maximize box office profits by running the film in just one theater per city at inflated ticket prices ("Charge high admissions; / Let people wait; / That will make them think they're / Seeing something great!
Despite the high-profile snub, Andrews made an Oscar-winning debut in Mary Poppins – released four months before My Fair Lady – and solidifying her big screen success with The Sound of Music.
"[9] He revisited the topic in October 2013, saying, "It really was the pinnacle of success for me, that I could be on the cover of MAD Magazine, with Alfred E. Neuman plunging my head into a toilet bowl.
Examples of these imaginary listings have included "Santa Claus, Porn Star"; "What if Cap'n Crunch Was Brought Before a Military Tribunal?
"; "If Bobby Knight Coached the Special Olympics"; "Only the Assistant Undersecretary of Transportation Would Possibly Believe..."; "What if Daffy and Donald Duck Went To Prison?
In recent years, all letters are typically answered in a snide and insulting manner, and always include a pun or twist on the sender's name.
The first letter printed came from a Marine Corps corporal named Eugene F. Shanlin, who said he "had never heard people laugh out loud at a comic magazine before!"
During a photo op in 1992, the then-Vice President had incorrectly "corrected" an elementary school student on the way Quayle thought the word "potato" should be spelled.
Beginning with issue number 500 (June 2009), writers and artists (except editorial staff members) have been given credit for individual contributions.
Both entries featured a convoluted assortment of unrelated facts, in the style of an inaccurate or vandalized Wikipedia page (e.g. the "article" on Pearl Harbor discussed Mao Tse-Tung's surprise attack and how it led to the bombing of Chernobyl).
[12] Truncated versions of two pre-existing features, *Celebrity Cause of Death Betting Odds" and *Melvin and Jenkins' Guide to..." have been moved to Fundalini.
An assortment of short gag comic strips drawn by various artists, it has appeared roughly every other month since its debut in the July 2005 issue.
Among the repeated strip characters are an omnipotent superhero called Fantabulaman; a hero robot named Santon; Rob, the Evil Backstabbing Robot Temp; Father O'Flannity, a priest who conducts celebrity interviews in a hot tub; Trigger McBride, a horse cop; the unnamed protagonists who use "The Machine that Travels Through Time"; Jeff, a man whose roommate is oblivious to the fact that he is a serial killer despite obvious evidence; and Patience Man, a superhero who takes too long to stop crimes.
These emphasize the visual motif above all else, parodying such things as movie posters, famous paintings, or magazine covers, though one or two text-heavier takeoffs are usually sprinkled into each year's assortment.
The "20th dumbest" slot of 2001 was awarded to Mad itself for its "slide down the slippery slope of greedy commercialism" in finally permitting advertising in its pages.
Mad has made frequent use of esoteric words, including potrzebie, furshlugginer, veeblefetzer, Moxie, ganef, halavah, and axolotl.
Among these are a potted avocado plant named Arthur (reportedly based on art director John Putnam's personal marijuana plant); a domed trashcan wearing an overcoat; a pointing six-fingered hand; the Mad Zeppelin (which more closely resembles an early experimental non-rigid airship); and an emaciated long-beaked creature who went unidentified for decades before being dubbed "Flip the Bird".
In late 1964, Mad was tricked into purchasing the "rights" to an optical illusion already in the public domain,[citation needed] featuring a sort of three-pronged tuning fork whose appearance defies physical possibility.
The magazine dubbed it the "Mad poiuyt" after the six rightmost letter keys on a QWERTY keyboard in reverse order, not realizing that the existing image was already known to engineers and usually called a blivet.
Mad cartoonists have regularly drawn themselves, fellow contributors and editors, and family members into the articles, most famously Dave Berg's self-caricature "Roger Kaputnik".
