A Note Or Two On The MAD Magazine Situation

Well, the story of MAD Magazine ceasing current publication has broken wide, with the usual caveats and spinning coming to the forefront. One thread offered up is that MAD isn't really ceasing publication because they'll be doing issues with reprints and new covers. I get not wanting to draw attention to the fact that a gigantic cultural icon slipped into a coma on your watch, but I think these things are better handled straight on. There were a ton of structural and cultural factors involved in trying to make successful an iconic publishing property. At the same time, I think we'd be better off considering the possibility that this most recent iteration of the magazine may not have been a surpassingly powerful effort. As far as I can tell, an engine of idea-generation at MAD's level put one cartoon/concept into the public eye its entire recent publication run; that's not a great record.

I'm actually more worried about the implications of the Vertigo brand re-sort, because that set of properties at least seemed to be doing the kind show generation that they wanted all of their books to be doing, and despite doing so they still changed things around. We live in interesting times, obviously, but there's interesting and there's depressing and I'm not sure of the ratios here. Not yet.
 
posted 4:45 pm PST | Permalink
 

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