WHAT, ME WORRY?

These are tough times financially, even enough to make Alfred E. Neuman worry.

MAD Magazine announced that starting with issue #500 this April, it will no longer be a monthly publication but instead quarterly. Spin-off MAD Kids will cease publication in February with MAD Classics final issue on sale in March.

Handling the news with style typical of MAD, Editor John Ficarra said, “The feedback we've gotten from readers is that only every third issue of MAD is funny, so we've decided to just publish those."

MAD Magazine launched in 1952, founded by legendary EC Comics Publisher William Gaines and Editor Harvey Kurtzman, and has satirized, parodied and just made fun of American life, culture and public figures ever since. Many comedians and writers - from Joyce Carol Oates to Monty Python’s Terry Gilliam and thousands in between - cite it as a seminal influence in their earlier years. While it was the home to legendary comedians and cartoonists such as Kurtzman, Mort Drucker, Don Martin, Jack Davis, Wally Wood, and John Sevrin in its early years, it has seen a new generation embrace its pages in recent years and has featured work from Peter Kuper, Hermann Mejia, Drew Friedman and Ted Rall.

The cover price of the quarterly issues will be $5.99. Issue #501 will go on sale in August, with #502 in November. Issues of the magazine will now be 56 pages, expanding from 48.

“Remember, MAD started out as eight times a year, before going to 12 and now four.” said Ficarra, “Just as Nostradamus had predicted.

I grew up reading MAD Magazine, laughing at the spoofs, falling in love with Sergio Aragones' cartoons and enjoying the fold-ins. To see the beginning of the end for MAD, this truly is mad news.

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