Nominal - 2019-07-06
Like The Simpsons, MAD was an American institution of ground mark comedy, but has been a zombie husk for the last 20 years.
It started with William Gaines dying and being bought by Time Warner. It went color, which no one asked for, and became choke full of ads, which everyone hated, supposedly to cover the increased cost of the color, which no one asked for. The subscription price skyrocketed from $2 to $4, and eventually $6.50, again to cover the cost of color that no one asked for.
One myth that was often repeated was that MAD was for kids. This was said by stupid dense people who laugh at Friends reruns and had never gone beyond glancing at a Spy vs Spy comic. This was obviously untrue to anyone who had ever actually read any of pre-Warner issues. Yes, kids just LOVE All in the Family parodies.
Which gets into why it nosedived after Time Warner. The ads were terrible EDGY shit aimed not just at 10 year olds, but terrible edge shit that corporate focus groups thought 10 year olds were into. This was exemplified by the infamous "Corn Gone Wrong" ads that appeared shortly after the shift to color.
https://www.cardcow.com/images/set199/card00451_fr.jpg
The content soon began reflecting this same focus. Every other article became some "Isn't it Lame When Parents..." that you would expect to see on some Nickelodeon or Disney channel sitcom. That awful Monroe comic became a staple, taking up 5 pages per issue.
The past 5 years it's seemed like half the Usual Gang of Idiots contributors were culled from Tumbler, with humor that was half for kiddies, half "everything is sexist" screed, just what 10 year olds want to read. Terrible flat observational humor and social commentary by people so clueless about adulthood that they walk through life using the term "adulting".
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