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2009 Vintage MAD Magazine Calendar
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- Collector's Premiere Edition
- 16 frame-ready 11"x14" reproductions of classic MAD Magazine cover art
- Large format 11"x15" wall calendar opens to 11"x30"
- ISBN: 978-1-60368-21-07
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Price: $18.95 |
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From the back cover: Fifty-six years ago, publisher William M. Gaines launched what would become a pop culture legend and America’s longest-running humor magazine, with the first issue of MAD. Irreverent, iridescent and irrepressible, MAD embodied the spirit of the counter-culture revolution with its take-no-prisoners approach to parody and satire. This collector’s premiere edition celebrates that legacy with reproductions of sixteen classic covers from those halcyon days. Produced on archival-quality, 100% recycled paper with soy-based inks, it is a timeless visual tribute to the “Usual Gang of Idiots.”
INSIDE: an introduction by Maria Reidelbach, author of Completely MAD: A History of the Comic Book and Magazine.
Introduction from the 2009 Calendar
"Alfred for President!"
Mad, the longest running humor magazine in American history, would be lost without its most famous character and cover boy, Melvin Coznowski.
Who?
Why, Melvin Coznowski, aka Mel Haney, the What Me Worry? kid, and, yes, and most famously, Alfred E. Neuman.
Like many other celebrities, our boy Alfred didn’t start out with the name by which he is now known. In fact, when he first appeared in MAD, in a 1955 issue, he didn’t even have a name—he was just a face that editor Harvey Kurtzman found on an old postcard. Kurtzman loved finding and reusing images from popular culture—from advertisements, old magazines, foreign newspapers and other ephemera—the more obscure the better. MAD was full of the stuff. It was unusual for a comic book. At times, MAD looked more like an experimental art magazine run by artists like Marcel Duchamp and John Heartfield.
The picture of the gap-toothed boy was more well-known than many Kurtzman had used. The leering face was a popular character and was used on political postcards, advertisements for painless dentistry, on matchbooks, soda bottles, and even on the nose of WWII aircraft. One of the most popular places was on an “inspirational” print, often hung in taverns, a blurry black and white lithograph, the idiotically grinning face above the immortal words “What, me worry?” The portrait had even been used on a 1908 calendar advertising heroin (at the time a legal, over-the-counter painkiller).
Who was this mysterious, repellent, yet strangely likeable personage? Where did he come from? In all the images, he is almost identical—the missing tooth, the jug ears, the cowlick—all with one eye slightly higher than the other. There have been rumors that he was once a real, living boy, although all the known images are drawings, not photographs.
In the meanwhile, fortunately, we can amuse ourselves with Alfred’s outrageous antics on virtually every cover of MAD magazine. When Al Feldstein took over as second editor of MAD in the late 1950s, he freed Alfred from the static portraiture in which he had been imprisoned. Following the lead of Playboy and the New Yorker, Feldstein wanted MAD to have a mascot. He and associate editor Nick Meglin set about finding an artist who could breathe life into the boy’s visage. Norman Mingo, an ace illustrator from an earlier era, became the artist to flesh out Alfred, to give him a body, and even a rear view. Mingo’s renderings of the boy have become the model against which all others have been judged.
With each new cover illustration, Alfred’s character became more defined as the consummate trickster. He’s a mischief-maker and the victim of same, even when setting off firecrackers. He’s a master of disguise—a hippy, a Vulcan, and a super hero (his mask has one eye higher than the other). He’s a cagey idiot: Who else would think to bring a change machine when Christmas caroling? Who else would arrange a shotgun wedding—for the bride? He makes a touchdown—but sails over the goalposts still clutching the ball! And like the archetypical trickster, Alfred often tells the truth, without anger or rancor, about things like pollution, the dangers of drugs, and politics. In fact, since 1956, he has run for president every four years. His motto? “You could do worse, and usually have.”
Yes, our boy Alfred has come a long way. But not so far that he’s outgrown our fondest role—our dorky, annoying, brilliant, hilarious, beloved, little brother. Long live Alfred E. Neuman!
Maria Reidelbach is an artist and author living in New York. She has accomplished many outlandish things, including writing the definitive history of MAD (Completely MAD: A History of the Comic Book and Magazine), creating the world’s largest garden gnome and the only miniature golf course landscaped entirely in edible plants (Homegrown Mini-Golf in Kerhonkson, NY), and is the president of the New York Mycological Society, a group of fungus enthusiasts.
Collector's Series
This calendar is part of a collector's series featuring
archival-quality reproductions of classic MAD Magazine cover art from the early days. Each year brings
16 different cover reproductions from actual issues of MAD Magazine, brought back for a new generation to enjoy. Officially Licensed
This is an officially licensed product of E.C. Publications.
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