No, I’m not happy either that Mad magazine is going under.

But — sorry — here goes:  How many of the people bemoaning its loss were still reading it?

I know there was me, and one good friend, and another friend I know who got it briefly and then I believe let it lapse, and… about six other people. According to reports, before its relaunch about a year and a half ago, it was down to 123,000 readers — and, after that, even fewer. That’s down from a one-time number of 7 million.

I think the time of Mad magazine was over before this announcement.

Let’s look at it this way:  The people before me were into coonskin caps; my generation, not so much. My kids have always had zero interest in reading Mad magazine, and believe me, I tried to get them interested. Lately, my interest in it, even as a subscriber, has been about zero; nothing in it compares with the heyday of Don Martin except, of course, Sergio Aragones — and he’s a holdover from that heyday. I’ve got three of the recent issues waiting for me to read them because I just couldn’t muster the interest. It’s not because I’m no longer 12 (and it’s no longer 1974); it’s because Mad is irrelevant. The Onion is doing a far better job in a far better way — in byte-sized bits, frequently the day-of the thing they’re satirizing — and so are  John Oliver and others on TV.

What will I miss about Mad? The comics from Sergio Aragones, and knowing that 98-year-old fold-in artist Al Jaffee still has a regular gig. That’s about it.

For me, the true upset is this:  the company that owns Mad (Warner Communications) has pulled the plug on a fan-oriented publication with a readership hovering around 100,000. Last month, except for the top five, every comic book published in America sold fewer than 100,000 copies. Batman sold 82,000. Avengers sold 49,000. When the Avengers can’t sell 50,000 copies, the end is near.  (Black Panther sold 20,000 copies. Twenty thousand! On what Earth is that sustainable?) Most of these comics are published by the same Warner Communications or their cross-town rival here in my home town of Burbank, CA, a little company called Disney. The only way these blockbuster corporations are going to keep the lights on for these little comic-book things is to serve as the equivalent of a think tank, supporting new ideas for movies, television, games, merchandise, and licensing.

Barring that, what happened to Mad is going to happen to the equally outmoded comic book.

This entry was posted on Friday, July 5th, 2019 at 5:46 pm and is filed under Comics, Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.