Well, I just saw something that sucks.
Another piece of my childhood is going dark. Mad Magazine, the subversive old rag that helped turn so many of us across a few generations into rational thinkers who could appreciate the absurd, is about to cease publication.
To be 10 years old in 1980 at my school was to be able to quote the best pieces from Mad. The kid with the new issue who was willing to pass it around always had friends. There was Cracked, sure, but it wasn't as good on a consistent basis.
I remember discovering at some point that my father had read Mad when he was a kid, too. And that he still had a couple of the original paperbacks. Classic art and gags from Martin, and Aragones, and the other legends. They were among my most prized possessions. They still are.
I met Sergio Aragones once at a comic book convention, and fanboyed all over him about what his tiny little cartoons hidden in the margins of Mad had meant to me. Something he'd probably heard 150 times that day. But he still gave me a smile, thanked me right back, and talked about the fun he had working at Mad over the years while he signed my Groo #1. Wonderful guy.
A tent, a cool summer night, a sleeping bag, a flashlight, and a fresh issue of Mad. When you were ten in 1980, that was heaven.
The world has changed. A dogeared, laughed over, finger-stained printed magazine with a folded back cover doesn't mean as much to today's young people.
I'm just glad I was able to share Mad with my son, like my father did with me, before old Alfred E. Newman uttered his final "What, me worry?"
So long, old friend.
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