Thread by @jaketapper

This was the first @MADmagazine I ever purchased. I was 7. The Fonz (@hwinkler4real) was the coolest guy in the world so this cover was revelatory in its subversiveness. And inside, the satire of All the President’s Men opened my mind to a world of satire I didn’t know of.

My friends and i started collecting MADs purchased at Fat Jack’s Comics in Philly. We read the satires of movies we weren’t old enough to see. We were introduced to the best caricaturist in the world: Mort Drucker.

We waited to see what MAD’s “usual gang of idiots” would say about shows we watched, such as M*A*S*H. The writers and cartoonists made fun of everyone, but they focused their ire on the government, bullies, advertising, and liars.

Michael Socolow wrote for the Smithsonian that MAD was “performing a vital public service, teaching American adolescents that they shouldn’t believe everything they read in their textbooks or saw on TV.”

smithsonianmag.com/history/heyday…

That is a true but to me and my friends it was just funny. Al Jaffee’s Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions, Don Martin, Sergio Aragones, Dave Berg...

To my fellow MAD fans, what do you remember/what will you miss?

Folks sharing their memories reminds me that in the summer of 1979 some particularly enthusiastic MAD fans in my bunk at Camp @RamahPoconos memorized the Battlestar Gallactica parody for some reason. cc @uzmons

One other random @MADmagazine memory — my best friend in grade school @JasonLerner215 and i collected MADs and on our last day as schoolmates — before we went off to different junior highs — he gave me his oldest most valuable issue, No. 28, which I still have! Meaningful gift.