What, Me Worry? MAD Magazine Going Quarterly 132
theodp writes "MAD Magazine is about to put out its 500th issue, but starting with its April publication, the mag is cutting down to only four issues per year. The feedback we've gotten from readers,' quipped Editor John Ficarra, 'is that only every third issue of MAD is funny, so we've decided to just publish those.' MAD Kids and MAD Classics are ceasing publication entirely. Keep up the what-me-worry game face, Alfred!"
Magazines are dying as a format. (Score:5, Insightful)
Given the amount of time we (by that I mean "I, and I assume everyone else is like me") spend online actually interacting with other people interested in a similar subject to ourselves it's no wonder we don't spend money on magazines any more. Unless the mag can survive on ad revenue alone, on transition to an online format that affords it's readers some interactivity then it'll die off. Obviously some titles, like Old Person Weekly or Luddite News, that cater for a non-tech-savvy audience will weather it better because their audience won't jump ship, but even those ones will be at the mercy of advertisers wanting to push their costs down.
I see a future without hardcopy magazines at all.
Re:Magazines are dying as a format. (Score:5, Insightful)
Agreed. However, I dislike the fact that I will have to take my laptop into the bathroom to replace the magazines :P
Re:old fashioned, old schmasioned (Score:4, Insightful)
But the target audience has changed. 1950-1980s Mad was actually pretty edgy for its time. Today, it seems kind of... tame and unfunny, especially with all the internet has to offer our 8 year-olds.
Re:Magazines are dying as a format. (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah but quite frankly, I'd rather have hardcopy. When my computer dies, or when I'm not around electronic devices to entertain me, having a couple of back issues of say, EGM(RIP), or MAD was a great way to kill time.
Re:Magazines are dying as a format. (Score:5, Insightful)
I see a future without hardcopy magazines at all.
Odds are that you don't commute by rail. Commuting by rail has its advantages, and the magazine format coincides nicely with a hard day's use of the laptop. Especially given boot times, logins, possibly a connecting train. You get the idea.
Also, like in the movie The Accidental Tourist, its often times nice to have reading material on public transport. Gives your eyes a socially-acceptable place to focus.
Re:old fashioned, old schmasioned (Score:1, Insightful)
Woof! Woof! Do not forget us Dogs on the Interweb!
Re:Magazines are dying as a format. (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is Mad Magazine used to be good. It used to push the edge a bit and have good writing.
Now it's just a bit bland and tiresome. I, for one, would have never thought they'd do a kid version of Mad. That just goes to s how how much it's change, imo.
Sad sign on the status of comedy (Score:5, Insightful)
Since then, the quality of the humor has dipped significantly, but it's still better than other junk that passes for comedy these days. They're even now recycling classic "Lighter Side Of..." segments in their issues.
Whomever tagged this "nothing of value was lost" needs a history lesson. Mad has its original roots as a satire of horror comics today. Mad Magazine still exists, and so do a lot of your tenets of free speech with comics and video games, because Bill Gaines stood up to those who wanted to censor horror comics, against those who were "thinking of the children." Does that sound familiar to anyone else?
60 Minutes has several profiles on the writing staff over the years. There are numerous books by the same writers about working at Mad and Bill Gaines.
If Mad Magazine goes under, we lose an American icon.
Re:Magazines are dying as a format. (Score:2, Insightful)
Dying is too strong a word. The format is being refined. The wheat is being separated from the chaff.
It's the magazines that use filler info in order to sell advertising that are losing out to the internet. These magazines aren't offering any substance of their own, so they're losing out to the free websites that are doing the same thing for less. Their entire cost is based on their method of distribution. The internet comes along with virtually free distribution and no cost to subscribers, it's a no-brainer that the magazines are going to tank.
The magazines I still subscribe to are primary sources of news, information, or analysis that cannot otherwise easily be had online. They all have online components which are available for free or a small extra charge. They carry few or no advertisements and recognize that their subscribers are their customers rather than the product (e.g. stories are not split up to cram more ads in better positions).
These magazines are more expensive, but you're paying more for the content than the delivery mechanism. These magazines can continue to thrive both as magazines and as websites because they have a monopoly on their content and their distribution costs are much smaller relative to their operating cost than the filler mags.
Re:evolve or die! (Score:3, Insightful)
It just desperately needs a better "usual gang of idiots".
My impression of mad was always (Score:3, Insightful)
If they had a daily "lighter side of" (or perhaps spy vs spy) online I'm sure they'd build up a decent following and stream for ad impressions. Comic magazines like Mad and Viz (British) are missing the electronic boat.
Re:Magazines are dying as a format. (Score:3, Insightful)
Meet Kindle [amazon.com], which answers all of your concerns.
Re:evolve or die! (Score:1, Insightful)
The manga compilation mags are doing fine (at least here in Japan) because everyone has time to read on the train going to work or school. I doubt they will ever cease publication on this side of the Pacific. If there was a decent mass transportation system in America newspapers and magazine would probably not be suffering as much, but currently in America, you are usually somewhere that has Internet access when you have time to waste so why pay for something else to read when you already pay for the endless variety on the net?
Captcha is smutty...irony +1?
MAD Super Special (Score:3, Insightful)
They only put out 12 of those a year! Oh, wait...
That does it, I'm switching to "Cracked".
Brett
Re:Magazines are dying as a format. (Score:5, Insightful)
Meet Kindle [amazon.com], which answers all of your concerns.
Well, except that nothing I want to read is published for it. I guess I could change all of my reading habits just to be cool, though.
Re:Quality versus quantity, perhaps. (Score:3, Insightful)
If you only go bi semi-annually, are your really bi?
Re:Magazines are dying as a format. (Score:5, Insightful)
The original folks are long gone. (Score:5, Insightful)
I loved Don Martin's stuff as a kid, but it's aged beyond relevance. Husbands don't come home and hang their business hat, (business hat??) and say, "Honeeeey, I'm Hoooome!" anymore. The whole psychological connection of the strip is lost. It didn't age well.
Spy vs Spy suffers from the same thing. The cold war is OVER. --Once brilliant, that strip is about as relevant and engaging today as Beetle Baily. (Which also once connected with people in a relevant way but which has become meaningless and prosaic.)
The only guy who still has the chops to fit today is Aragones. His "Side Lines" and basic style still shine.
I can't even remember any of the other guys doing stuff in Mad, but the collection of that bunch all at the same place and time was what floated Mad Magazine. The last issue I looked at, a couple of months ago as it happens, was just a bunch of re-tread attempts by no-name artists to copy old formulas.
It read the way the new Kermit sounds. False and without spark or meaning.
Sorry, but artistic collectives must die or change with their creators passing. The only way Mad could shine again would be if they hired on a bunch of luminary geniuses versed in comic observation and satire, (of the Jon Stewart caliber), who also happen to be able to draw in awesome, engaging styles. Not only that, but the editors would have to be willing to allow such new talent to re-invent the whole look of the magazine so that it reflected themselves. --Because anybody willing to copy a dead format and a dead style which last-gasped sometime around the 1980's is certainly not going to be particularly luminary. Any real genius would have been driven mad (ahem) over the restrictions and left asap.
And Intelligent cartoon satire hasn't vanished. There are new guys doing awesome things which don't try to be Kermit, but which are unique and genuinely exciting. XKCZ, for example, is fresh and new and. . , bloody cynical. (Imagine; there was a time when Beetle Baily was just as electric!) The big difference today is that the luminaries aren't all gathered in one convenient place anymore, and certainly not exclusively on paper. You have to go looking. --That's the part which I find most difficult. I enjoyed concentrations of work which I knew everybody else was experiencing. There was something tribal and culture-defining about it which I really drew energy from as a reader. These days, it's easy to feel disconnected.
Thank-goodness for Slashdot, eh?
-FL
Good old days (Score:3, Insightful)
What you are experience is the nostalgia of youth. Watching an 80s transformers cartoon today, at my age, just doesn't invoke the sense of awesomeness it did when I was young. The cheesy plots, dialogue, ans sometimes crappy animation shine through.
Cracked magazine, however, seems to have come of age in the internet. The magazine always seemed like an un-funny knock off of mad magazine back in the day. Now, I find their online top-ten lists hilarious.
So wake me when it is $50 and non-DRM... (Score:3, Insightful)
...and can reproduce the same color, format size, and dot pitch of the average full color magazine.
Oh, and I won't care if I drop it or lose it rushing for my connection.
Kindle is a nice toy...but really...that's all it is so far.
Re:Magazines are dying as a format. (Score:2, Insightful)