The irreverent legacy of Mad Magazine

Mad Magazine began in 1952 as a comic book that made fun of other comic books - and soon became an institution for mocking authority in all spheres of life, from TV, movies and advertising, to politicians and parents. Correspondent David Pogue visits a new museum exhibition celebrating the humor of Mad, as created by the artists and writers who called themselves "the usual gang of idiots."
"CBS News Sunday Morning" features stories on the arts, music, nature, entertainment, sports, history, science and Americana, and highlights unique human accomplishments and achievements. Check local listings for "CBS News Sunday Morning" broadcast times.
Subscribe to the "CBS News Sunday Morning" KZbin channel: / cbssundaymorning
Get more of "CBS News Sunday Morning": cbsnews.com/su...
Follow "CBS News Sunday Morning" on Instagram: / cbssundaymorning
Like "CBS News Sunday Morning" on Facebook: / cbssundaymorning
Follow "CBS News Sunday Morning" on Twitter: / cbssunday
Subscribe to our newsletter: cbsnews.com/ne...
Download the CBS News app: www.cbsnews.co...
Try Paramount+ free: paramountplus....
For video licensing inquiries, contact: [e-mail]

[@JeffreyGillespie]

I’m a 70s kid and I used to love to go down to the bodega and pick up a Mad Magazine. Such strong memories! My favorite was spy versus spy.

[@OblivionAviator]

Me, as well....a 70s kid. White spy vs. black spy was awesome! They were like the Road Runner & Wile E. Coyote only wayyyyy cooler! Another favorite of mine were all the songs they used to come up "sang to the tune of ". Good times! 🤣😂🤣

[@waldo1967]

Love how they made the CBS Sunday Morning sun Alfred E. Neuman😎

[@amysullivan774]

Al Jaffee, Dave Berg, and Sergio Aragones. Such talent; loved all their work!

[@cannonw59]

I read MAD every week in my youth.

[@navidhendrix]

MAD Magazine kept me very happy when I was much younger.

[@KOOLBadger]

My brother loved this mag. I grew up with it in my house. I am 60. I remember they always satired 'the Waltons'😂🤭

[@marblemark1903]

I spent a lot of lawn mowing money on Mad Magazine's...and Mr.Drucker was the Best Caricature Artist on the planet...💯

[@sharonhoepker]

"Stupid answers to stupid questions" - sheer brilliance and for a kid "HELL YAAASS!!!" permission to point out the obvious. Thank you MAD.

[@pibbitybibbity]

As a kid growing up in the ‘70s, I read it cover to cover each time. It made me laugh out loud for real. I was more mature for my age (and my parents didn’t exactly set the best boundaries) so I understood the humor in it for adults as well. My favorite was the inside back cover, of course. It always fascinated me the level of work and detail that went into the full page and then you folded it and there was a simple statement. I also loved the movie spoofs.

[@andrewpierce1588]

I grew up on these mags…really helped develop my intellect and humor. It was more highbrow than people realize. Thanks, Mom, for always saying “yes” when I asked to but a Mad.

[@cherylcampbell9369]

Yes! Both the intellect and humor. Hone the funny bone whilst training the brain.

[@jamesslick4790]

My mother was fully supportive of me reading Mad, And later on National Lampoon. Hell, she even bought them for me! She worked in sales her whole career, So she KNEW a healthy dose of skepticism and even some "snark" were good.

[@kittyokat13]

Can you imagine how MAD would make fun of todays world? Or Covid? We will Miss you MAD Magazine!

[@yvonneplant9434]

There was and is nothing funny about covid. NOTHING. 😠

[@justcurious4678]

I’m a 70yo woman from the Netherlands and bought MAD in the seventies.

[@igorschmidlapp6987]

So, do you still smoke pot while you're turning tricks in Amsterdam? ;-P

[@anastasiabeaverhausen8220]

I loved MAD. Always enjoyed how Murphy Brown had covers of the magazine framed on her office walls (yes, Candy Bergen was a fan.)

[@user-tf9en1lo3c]

Over the decades, Mad has been a magazine as important to understanding our time as Time, Life, Newsweek, U.S. News & World Reports, The Atlantic, The New Yorker, National Review, The New Republic, The Nation and any others you can think of. And, lest we forget, unlike these other money-hungry magazine publishers, Mad always delivered its content to readers for a competitive price: Cheap!

[@joemartinez331]

They should have included Sergio Aragonés in the interview. One of the last greats from MAD still living.

[@plr2473]

so true

[@edithlazenby5839]

Love love this magazine.... literally the liturgy of my childhood...❤

[@BeTheLight624]

Thank you for running this piece CBS, with the Alfred E Neuman ending as a perfect exclamation mark! Fantastic illustrations and characteritures, gut wrenching humor….MAD Magazine will live on in our memories… …and I can’t look or think of King/Prince Charles without seeing him as Alfred E Neuman …someone should show that illustration to Prince Harry…I think at this point he might enjoy it….Long Live MAD…thank you for the laughs!

[@GloriaGraceRand]

I grew up reading MAD! So many features - like Spy vs Spy, Don Martin gags and of course the movie parodies were the best!

[@bondsons]

Grew up in the 60's and always bought the new "MAD" when it came out! "What, me worry"?

[@waldo1967]

Although, changing times, the internet, etc. may have contributed to MAD's decline, ever notice a common denominator in the demise of many things? Corporate takeovers...

[@chrisfinch8637]

You are now reading MAD Magazine…..MAD! I still miss all those nostalgic memories of MADtv, in which the series was based on, as well as the classic characters, Antonia, the Vancome Lady, Stuart, Miss Swan, and Doreen Larkin, Lorraine, Uh-Oh HOT DOG!, Ty and Carl, John Madden, Bill Cosby, Dr. Phil, Oprah Winfrey, Ellen DeGeneres, Connie Chung, and also Spishak and CLOPS. Forever will hold those characters and moments near and dear to my heart. 1995-2009

[@kitcat1278]

I loved MADtv!!

[@MikeGrant-q7b]

Way funnier than SNL

[@chrisfinch8637]

@@MikeGrant-q7bWell, at least I liked Saturday Night Live in the 70s and 80s, and a little 90s, here and there. In Living Color, another great series, and SCTV, too, with such greats like John Candy, Martin Short, Andrea Martin, Eugene Levy, and Joe Flaherty. Yeah, all those shows from way back then would have much more class than what we would see on SNL, nowadays.

[@cherylcampbell9369]

67 yo now. I was one of those GIRLS who can still sing a lot of the satirical songs, and will trot out a Horrifying Cliché once in awhile. At one time, I had 20, or so, paperbacks like Don Martin Drops Out, etc.

[@thomasrobinson182]

We live in Mad Magazine.

[@ABC123-v9u]

I remember reading my brother's MAD magazines growing up 😅.

[@bbjoseyjw]

I cut my teeth on MAD MAGAZINE! thank you! 🦘💙

[@bettyjones113]

I started reading it while JFK was president. A classmate did MUDD magazine. We worked on the elementary school newspaper. He went to Vietnam then UGA, then newspaper humorist in Augusta, GA. Memories.

[@irishriot_m20j]

Loved all the Star Bleech series in MAD, especially when Mort Drucker was the cartoonist.

[@johnpaulwebb3440]

Alfred is now Govenor in Florida.

[@RHTeebs]

I was born in '99. I used to read MAD when I was a kid.

[@morriganinoregon]

I was born in 1950. I used to read MAD when I was a kid, too!

[@savethezombies]

I love what they did with your sunburst logo. I love everything they did from the spoofs, to the fold ins, to Spy v Spy, to the tiny non sequitur comic scenes they would have going on in the margins. Truly outside the box.

[@kimblake9356]

My older brother bought Mad Magazine regularly in the 1970s. It was a major influence in my life as a kid.

[@laerwen]

I was the only 12 year old girl in the early 90s that I knew of who was obsessed with MAD. Every week when my parents did the grocery shopping, they were checking out and I was at the magazine stand looking to see if it was a MAD issue my mom would let me keep. (She was just a concerned parent who wanted to know what her kid was reading, nothing extreme.) But it changed me - because I understood jokes and references nobody my age understood. I graduated to taking out the MAD treasuries from my local library to see the issues from the 60s and 70s and I learned so much from them! Between this and MST3K, satire and cultural references became the thing that formed my sense of humor.

[@CathyS_Bx]

How did I survive Catholic school in the 1960s? MAD!!!!

[@Redipstick]

Their issues making fun of Barry Lyndon, The God Father 2, and Jaws are burned in my memory.

[@beyondvaudeville]

So great to see MAD get the respect it deserves. This was the last interview with the late great MAD publisher William M. Gaines… kzbin.info/www/bejne/q2a9f2moaJZoZqM

[@doctorhamburger1346]

This is a fantastic story about a magazine I grew up on. Thank you.

[@yvonneplant9434]

Trump did say a funny thing by saying that Pete B looked like MAD's Alfred E Neuman. As I recall it Pete didn't know who that was.

[@paulforester6996]

I still have my Mad Magazine card game. Made in 1979. It has no UPS tag. I just checked. I'll have to play it again.

[@pamelahall517]

YEAH! MAD. I learned to read using MAD. My dad and I used to do readouts of Mort Drucker Movie and TV parodies on his reel to reel recorder when I was , like 6!! MAD was a fav of my Dad. Mort was my favorite artist. Dad got my brother and I "VOTE FOR ALFRED E NEWMAN" pins during the Kennedy/Nixon election. We wore them to school and they made us take them off! I LOVED MAD! No advertisers tainted their wonderfully satirical look at life! I'm so happy I grew up during its golden age. The Usual Gang of Idiots will live in my heart forever!

[@johnmoreno96]

Mad Magazine is the only thing that made sense to me in this Crazy World ☝

[@archiechoke23]

It was the best

[@kt9166]

I have the many CD-ROM box set of MAD, which, unfortunately, I cannot view any more because it was issued in the days of Windows Prehistoric. I do so wish that it would reappear for us on Windows 10 or 11-viewable DVDs! There is a DVD which apparently contains all the issues up to 2005 on one DVD, which you are required to load (all 7 gigs) into your computer to view, but, Portzebie, it runs 110 smackers on WeeBay! Ain't it time for a new one, 'specially if you'd be able to just put it in your DVD drive and just READ it? Gloryosky!

[@shakeemwinn3647]

Been a fan since forever.

[@Jean-us6ow]

I used to buy MAD in the late 70's I loved it!!

[@cherylcampbell9369]

35¢. IT'S CHEAP.

[@marianneegland5576]

LOVE IT!!!❤

[@mikeroberts7921]

I was going to post that! It was money, well spent.

[@jamesslick4790]

Mad Magazine very much influenced my humor, And I believe actually helped me navigate this crazy world by finding the humor in almost anything. Fortunately my mother was fully supportive of me reading it, And later on National Lampoon. Hell, she even bought them for me! She worked in sales her whole career, So she KNEW a healthy dose of skepticism and even some "snark" were good.

[@ManChan-w5p]

No advertising in the magazines.

[@claudetteholloway1126]

I grew up with MAD Magazine...

[@claudetteholloway1126]

Loved SPY VS. SPY...

[@lisabrown1114]

I too was formed by MAD!, Best lesson for an only child.

[@Rocketman1292]

This upcoming election, What Me Worry?

[@BeTheLight624]

My thoughts, while reading these comments, exactly!

[@MelindaEverett-r9q]

💙

[@lynnemanning9553]

I love that, "don't buy the con"....yahoo!!! It is sad that it is over, the "mad" era! I think they were so right on with their irreverence! A lot of what human beings do, is absolutely insane and unconscious to us, we get so immeshed into our creation, our movie, our political stance, ourselves! And Mad Magazine brought some of that unconscious, self absorbed behavior into view in a very funny way!! I like how they think! And laugh!!

[@clayclifton3895]

❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤

[@bobbyk9815]

But what about "Cracked"?

[@JustinCase780]

Just got off the horn with Alfred E. Neuman. He said to me, "The real jokes are on the people of 2024 for losing their sense of humor and not knowing that they use to own it."

[@laerwen]

I don't think anyone's lost their sense of humor in 2024. It's punching down that sucks.

[@JustinCase780]

@@laerwen From someone with no sense of humor. 😂😅

[@MrLegarcia]

Reporter explosive emotional “interventions” lower the quality of the article. He should have ask around if the jokes were difficult to get. English is my second language and I usually got the jokes the first time around.

[@b1646717]

Fa!

[@JoseMorales-lw5nt]

All praises to William Gaines! The very reason MAD even exists was due to the Comics Code initiative that sought to censor the great works of Gaines' previous success...... HORROR COMICS. Yup, he was the man who gave us EC COMICS, and a little gem called TALES FROM THE CRYPT. We have Mr. Gaines to thank for the comics, the HBO anthology series, and a certain hedonistic host!😂❤

[@RichardRichiuso]

So nice to see