MAD Magazine

Mad is an American humor magazine founded by publisher William Gaines and editor Harvey Kurtzman in 1952. Offering satires on all aspects of American pop culture, the monthly publication deflates stuffed shirts and pokes fun at common foibles. It is the last surviving title from the notorious and critically acclaimed EC Comics line. Publisher Gaines had suffered greatly from censorship, which had literally driven his prior line of EC horror comics from the stands.

Alfred E. Neuman

The image most closely associated with the magazine is that of Alfred E. Neuman, the curly-haired boy with misaligned eyes, a gap-toothed smile and the question "What? Me worry?" Alfred's image first appeared on the cover of the magazine within the first few years of its existence. Before that he had appeared inside a small portion of an issue. The original image of an unnamed boy with a goofy gap-toothed grin was a popular humorous graphic many years before Mad adopted it. It had been used for all manner of purposes, from U.S. political campaigns to Nazi racial propaganda to advertisements for painless dentistry. Decades ago, the magazine was sued over the copyright to the image, but prevailed by producing similar ones predating the claimant, back to the late 19th Century. The face is now permanently associated with Mad, and with the "What? Me worry?" motto, often appears in political cartoons as a shorthand for unquestioning stupidity. For many years, Mad sold prints of the "official portrait" of Alfred E. Neuman in a small ad at the front of the magazine. A female version of Alfred appeared for a very brief time in the late 1950s. The name "Alfred E. Neuman" derived from the 1940s radio show of comedian Henry Morgan which sometimes featured a running gag about Hollywood composer Alfred Newman. Later, Morgan was a contributor to Mad.

Related Topics:
Alfred E. Neuman - Nazi - Henry Morgan - Composer - Alfred Newman

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