Al Jaffee turns 100

MAD ceased publishing in 2019.

I have no idea what it was called. It was around A5 or maybe A6 in size, about 100 or so pages, and it was all about dungeons and executioners and prisoners.

It was dark, silly, and once my English improved to the point where I could understand it, it was down right hilarious!

Definitely shaped my sense of humour ^_^

Congrats to Al on reaching this epic milestone.

One of the very few regrets in my life.

In due course, I’m very keen to teach my (toddler) daughter about money etc - but not at the expense of blowing some cash on childhood frivolities (especially ones that give joy for a whole year).

For his hundredth birthday? Sounds less like a coincidence and more like a tribute.

I haven't independently verified these, but I do recall other items that appeared as jokes in Mad, and later turned up for real: "Shpratz(sp?)", a spray to give your car the "new-car smell"; also an unnamed device that would keep your car from running if you weren't paying attention to the road (as depicted, for instance, because you were ogling someone you were passing on the sidewalk, though come to think of it, maybe it just snapped your head back to face forward).

Note for anyone not familiar The NY Times crosswords build in difficulty through the week. Saturday is actually the most technically challenging. Sunday’s is the biggest. Thursday’s usually have some sort of trick you need to figure out like a rebus square (takes multiple letters in a single square) or answers that wrap around.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potrzebie#System_of_measuremen...

The first 23 issues were insane stream-of-consciousness comic books. Anything you liked about the the tv show Police Squad or the movies Airplane!, The Naked Gun, etc., was basically just early Mad. Will Eisner, Harvey Kurtzman, Basil Wolverton at his manic best. Legends.

The stuff you're talking about, the pure gags, the Spy vs. Spy... some of it was great, most of it was mediocre, but the main thing it did was let them make every magazine a digest. You could have a mix of new content and old every month.

I vividly remember buying a copy of Mad Magazine in the early 90's that included one of their moronic movie spoofs. You know, carnival-style big head caricatures, everybody just has a new name that's a poop joke?

In 1992, that spoof was of the movie Love Story, released in 1970. Half the jokes in the Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions at that time were about key parties and leisure suits.

That's why you perceived it as "old hippie humor from people who didn't understand social currents that arose since the 1960s, like video games and hip-hop... and didn't want to."

They were just reprinting old content with a little new stuff sprinkled in.