The End of Mad Magazine

"Not only do I not know what is going on, I wouldn't know what to do about it if I did." George Carlin

Say it ain't so.

It is hard to believe that Mad Magazine announced it is going to cease production the way we have come to know it. They will still produce books and special collections, so maybe that isn't too bad. The old content is all the funny stuff anyway.

What does this mean for people searching for humor?

Well, the magazine will still be available at comic book stores and to subscribers.

Mad magazine is owned by DC, and DC is owned by Time Warner. The truth is the magazine really hasn't been as relevant and funny as it once was, so declining sales and the reality of young people not buying magazines means the end of an era.

Maybe it is just a sad truth that magazines are just like any other business in the way that they have a life cycle and that Mad magazine couldn't find a way out of the decline cycle. As readership shrinks, and advertisers chase new ways and places to advertise in the age of Facebook and other social media, print magazines just aren't a safe place for advertisers to spend money.

If you look at Mad and the content, yes it is still funny, but the time it takes to produce and reach the end user is too long in today's age of instant gratification. The movie spoofs don't have the appeal that they had two generations ago because the movie is already streaming by the time Mad spoofs it, or so it seems. There are other parts of the magazine that were replaced with comic strips, and the direction of the magazine seems lost at times.

The culture of political correctness also harmed the magazine. The 1990s were rife with political correctness and the stench only got bigger. The readership continued to shrink in the 1990s as the magazine struggled to stay relevant in the age of the internet boom.

Yes, it is easy to point fingers, but the magazine that once pushed boundaries now pulls the doors closed. It seems we lost our appetite for humor that pushed the boundaries of political correctness and humor that required the ability to read and understand satire.

The magazine as we know it is gone, but what is going to replace it?