Al Feldstein has passed. We all owe him a huge debt of gratitude.

[Are_grits_groceries]

NEW YORK (AP) — Before "The Daily Show," ''The Simpsons" or even "Saturday Night Live," Al Feldstein helped show America how to laugh at authority and giggle at popular culture.

Millions of young baby boomers looked forward to that day when the new issue of Mad magazine, which Feldstein ran for 28 years, arrived in the mail or on newsstands. Alone in their room, or huddled with friends, they looked for the latest of send-up of the president or of a television commercial. They savored the mystery of the fold-in, where a topical cartoon appeared with a question on top that was answered by collapsing the page and creating a new, and often, hilarious image.

Thanks in part to Feldstein, who died Tuesday at his home in Montana at age 88, comics were more than escapes into alternate worlds of superheroes and clean-cut children. They were a funhouse tour of current events and the latest crazes. Mad was breakthrough satire for the post-World War II era — the kind of magazine Holden Caulfield of "The Catcher In the Rye" might have read, or better, might have founded.

"Basically everyone who was young between 1955 and 1975 read Mad, and that's where your sense of humor came from," producer Bill Oakley of "The Simpsons" later explained.

Feldstein's reign at Mad, which began in 1956, was historic and unplanned. Publisher William M. Gaines had started Mad as a comic book four years earlier and converted it to a magazine to avoid the restrictions of the then-Comics Code and to persuade founding editor Harvey Kurtzman to stay on. But Kurtzman soon departed anyway and Gaines picked Feldstein as his replacement. Some Kurtzman admirers insisted that he had the sharper edge, but Feldstein guided Mad to mass success.

One of Feldstein's smartest moves was to build on a character used by Kurtzman. Feldstein turned the freckle-faced Alfred E. Neuman into an underground hero — a dimwitted everyman with a gap-toothed smile and the recurring stock phrase "What, Me Worry?" Neuman's character was used to skewer any and all, from Santa Claus to Darth Vader, and more recently in editorial cartoonists' parodies of President George W. Bush, notably a cover image The Nation that ran soon after Bush's election in 2000 and was captioned "Worry."

"The skeptical generation of kids it shaped in the 1950s is the same generation that, in the 1960s, opposed a war and didn't feel bad when the United States lost for the first time and in the 1970s helped turn out an Administration and didn't feel bad about that either," Tony Hiss and Jeff Lewis wrote of Mad in The New York Times in 1977.
Much more:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/01/al-feldstein-dead-mad-magazine-obituary_n_5244595.html



To a life and a man that made a difference. Bravo!

[Laelth]

1. k&r for Al Feldstein and Mad Magazine.

I certainly remember reading Mad and enjoying it.

-Laelth

[corkhead]

2. I still have my collection of Mad Magazines somewhere. Every issue from 1971 to 1978

Never had a subscription, I bought every one at the grocery store newsstand. I also have a bunch of the paperback collections of earlier material stuffed away in boxes I haven't seen in a couple of decades but know where they are. Time to dig them out.

I am forever in their debt for helping warp my mind during my formative years.

R.I.P. Al.

[Rhiannon12866]

4. My Dad had a subscription for years, bought them at a newsstand store before that

My brother and I'd go with him and he'd buy each of us a comic book. And we read my Dad's MAD Magazines when we were fairly young, still remember so many things. As far as I know, my Dad never threw them away, so we'd read them more than once. The one that went the farthest back was, I think, from 1957.

Godspeed, Mr. Feldstein. You brought laughter to so many people, not a bad legacy...

[zeemike]

7. J wish I had saved every Mad I had read as a kid.

But usually they were passed around and I never saw them again.
But Alfred E Newman was a cult hero among kids of my time.
Dig them out and read them again...that is what I would do.

[awoke_in_2003]

11. Boy, I wish I did...

I, too, bought all of mine at the news stand. As to warping, I like to think they unwarped our minds and made us think- then again, I may just be warped

[malaise]

3. I still have some of my Mad Magazines from way back when

Thank you Al Feldstein

[Paladin]

5. RIP from someone who grew up on "Mad" magazine. (nt)

[Lugnut]

6. I grew up with MAD magazine.

RIP Mr Feldstein.

[dembotoz]

8. mad mag would really go after bush

at times when others were more timid

[Ron Obvious]

9. I've got the first 500 issues on CD

Somewhere in the house are about 50 hard copies as well, probably many missing covers, but I haven't seen them in years.

In college, I was kicked out of class once when I was secretly reading the magazine and trying real hard to stifle my laughter but eventually roared out loud. I'm thinking the article might have been "why turtles are the perfect pet" (They don't hump your leg, they don't dig holes in your yard, if they run away, you can find them easily, etc."

I just lost it when I saw the smiling turtle in the toilet bowl ("Turtle swimming pool&quot . It was funny enough, but it was the attempts to suppress my laughter that got me into trouble.

RIP Al Feldstein, and thanks.

[kath]

10. "Basically everyone who was young between 1955 and 1975 read Mad" - is this true, or does it just

Pertain to MALES who grew up during that period?
Honestly curious - as a woman who grew up during that time, while I was aware of Mad, I don't think I ever read awhole issue, nor ever purchased a copy, nor did any of the girls I knew.

Any other Boomer women care to join in?

[awoke_in_2003]

12. You know...

I never saw a female read it. I had never thought about that before.