Drew Friedman visits MAD Magazine, 1974

In 1974, my favorite portrait artist Drew Friedman, then 15-years-old, visited the offices of MAD Magazine. And all he got was the crummy souvenir above. Actually, he also got a terrific blog post out of it that he's just now published. From Drew's site:

(MAD publisher) Bill Gaines' office was a cluttered, messy mini-museum, filled with Zeppelin artifacts (he was obsessed with dirigibles, King Kong and the Statue of Liberty), A human skull (which he told me belonged to his father) stacks of MAD's and EC comics book collections and comic fan magazines (Squa Tront, etc). Instead of a view of the New York skyline, the lone window had a giant King Kong head peering in…

Amongst the debris and wall decor there was of course a lot of MAD and EC items, including 3 large framed color paintings above his desk depicting the three EC horror mascots, the Vault Keeper, the Crypt Keeper and the Old Witch, all of which I studied up close. I was in heaven…

"A Visit to MAD Magazine"

• [ROSSINDETROIT]

  “A human skull (which he told me belonged to his father)”  could be interpreted in two ways, one of which is kind of icky.

  • [Thad Boyd]

    I like to think that delightful ambiguity is entirely deliberate.

• [mikedt]

  Just the other day I was reminiscing about MAD magazine with my wife. I mentioned that as a kid I got most of my movie cultural touchstones by reading the MAD magazine version of the movie. This was a time before movie rentals and if you didn’t have the cash to visit the theater every other week you had to wait a year or more before a movie showed up on TV.

  • [latelatelateshow]

    The early HARVEY KURTZMAN years (Issues 1 thru 32) were the true ground-breaking times for MAD. Kurtzman initially created and elegantly infused MAD with a true rebellious comic book spirit. Later on, Kurtzman wanted a bigger financial share of the MAD empire and Gaines refused to hand it over to him. Gaines was a kind of genius, BUT Kurtzman was a true genius through and  through, in his rough sketches for other artists and his finished artwork and logically-comic stories

    I happened to look at the current issue of MAD the other day. The slick interior color schemes and bad 3-D style artwork is fairly off-putting. MAD’s glory years were 1968 – through late 1974 and glorious they were!

• [Douglas Lieberman]

  The article says Bill Gaines was “obsessed with dirigibles.” Actually there’s more to it. Bill was a member of the Dirigible Society of America, an organization born at Columbia University in the mid-60s that was dedicated to mocking public figures who made fools of themselves. For example, when Governor Orville Faubus of Arkansas vetoed a bill that would allow the teaching of evolution in public schools, we commended him with a certificate and letter about the pernicious theory that “man is descended from the apes. You, sir, are living proof that this evolution has not taken place.” Not getting the joke, Faubus posted the certificate in his office! Gaines would join us at our annual picnics in Woodstock (a couple of years before, you know, Woodstock) and ride in our parade defiling a Cadillac convertible and waving at the startled locals. He was a wonderful man who always got the joke.

  • [Thad Boyd]

    Ha, never knew all that.  I just knew Aragones and Jaffee liked to draw blimps everywhere.

    Thanks for the history lesson; funny stuff.

• [sp]

  I remember visiting the office when Bill Gaines was still alive and I’ll always remember King Kong peeking around him at his desk.

• [L_Mariachi]

  I visited the old MAD offices in about 1978 because I happened to be in the building for some other reason; no one was there but I remember a mail slot labeled “PLASTIC MAN ENTRANCE.”  Years later I wound up working for them after they were bought by DC and moved across the street from the Ed Sullivan Theater (where Letterman is filmed.)