Mad Man
The 25th of March 1982 was my 11th birthday and it was the most exciting day of my life. I was leaving Portslade and travelling with my Dad to London to visit The London Dungeon, a place I had always wanted to go to since I became aware of its existence. As a child I loved a history that they didn't teach in schools - I like sword-fights, Viking bersekers, woad, runes, mud and magic and megalithic structures. I still quite like those things, in fact. So when I found out there was a place you could go to meet murderers, plague victims and their rats and a giant, talking Satan it was my dream to go there. And my Dad agreed to take me. Now The London Dungeon was great: the talking Satan actually terrifying (it was a projection on to a statue - but the effect was unnerving and quite naturalistic) and I was agreeably freaked out. I think I ate a hamburger too but I might just be making that up - nobody's day was that good! Satan and a Wimpy? Unreliable narrator alert.
But neither of those things changed my life. What changed my life was my Dad asking me if I wanted something to read on the train. I scanned the racks. I had been a solid Beano or Dandy man, occasionally drifting into the more exotic climes of Cheeky or Shiver and Shake. But I was no longer ten - I was eleven and it was time to put away childish things. In September I would be going to big school, after all. I don't know if I had discovered the unknown pleasures of 2000AD by this point but I was certainly aware of the British Marvel comics, often just older American comics repackaged in black and white and on poorer quality paper for the British market, presumably because there was still a war on.
My eyes drifted over Twinkles and Buntys and Mistys and up until I saw it - glossy and magnificent and priced and an eye-watering 45p ("cheap") in bright red curling script: MAD. It looked so exciting. The colours weren't made of blotchy, pointillist dots, the front cover was painted! The back cover featured a full colour cartoon of a man committing suicide: the front cover featured a sign saying "Last Gas for 25 Miles" and a man standing beside it burping while a woman with a petrol can looked nonplussed. I didn't know what any of it meant barring the fact that the magazine was advertising itself with a massive belch - this was not a slap up feed in the last panel - this was anarchy! I chanced my arm with my Dad, well aware that it was four times as expensive as the Beano. But he emitted the customary grunt he reserved for producing his wallet and bought it for me.
I spent the train journey looking over the top of my new magazine wondering if the volcanic changes occurring within me were visible on my face. Were my hands shaking? Was I visibly maturing? Were hairs sprouting on the back of my hands? My Dad couldn't have known what he had bought me - I didn't know what it was I was reading. First of all was the concept of satire: the magazine contained a parody of the James Bond film "For Your Eyes Only" here called, with scandalous daring, "For Her Thighs Only". The Beano would occasionally do a quick pastiche of a popular cultural trend, often featuring a cameo from a pop star or and obvious analogue, but this was a deconstruction of the ENTIRE FILM, forensically dissected and featuring not one iota of respect - this wasn't good-natured fun, the writers clearly thought this film was shit and didn't care who knew about it. Also, the caricatures by my second favourite artist Mort Drucker actually looked like the people they were supposed to be, and when he drew a 2CV it was recognisably a 2CV. It was thrilling. There were mentions of sex to add to the suicide jokes. I could feel my voice breaking, my plums edging down my thighs like nervous abseilers.
Better still was a musical about the mafia drawn by my favourite artist, Jack Rickard. A musical, about organised crime...in a comic! Jack Rickard normally did the painted covers of the magazine's mascot Alfred E Neuman but his pen and wash style inside the magazine that made me giddy with excitement. I remember trying to copy his tiny drawing of Mafia Boss Don Carlo, judging it to be a perfect drawing. Even today it has a sumptuous elegance, a clarity and weight. I could copy Jack Rickard but I could never draw like him. But I spent years trying - drawing my own comic, another feeble variant on Mad like Cracked or Frantic, which I called with the accuracy that comes from a total lack of self-awareness Desperate. It had a mascot with a big nose and a woolly hat who might have drooled. I forget his name but it would have been one of those Mad magazine names: James Arthur Gerflinken or Roger C Kerplunkish.
The other day my friend Paddy, who is moving house, sent me a picture of some old comics he had found and there, second from the right, was MY copy of Mad. I mean I had other issues - I bought it on and off for years and it opened up whole worlds: American TV I would never see, Jewish humour, sex, death, shoes that made the noise "gershplatt". Al Jaffee's woodcut vandalism opened me up to Surrealism, Jack Rickard's covers made me want to paint faces, the writing of Dick de Bartolo and Lou Silverstone is paying off in ways I never thought possible: last year scripting a comic book version of A Christmas Carol for The Brexit magazine was my Mad magazine dream come true.
I bit Paddy's hand off for that copy of the magazine and with supreme generosity he just gave it to me. Its next to me on the desk. Every image inside is seared into my brain, every bad joke. This is where it all comes from, the UR text, I learned everything from Mad Magazine.
Except "What, me worry?" I still worry. The Tao of Alfred E Neuman was sadly lost on me.
But neither of those things changed my life. What changed my life was my Dad asking me if I wanted something to read on the train. I scanned the racks. I had been a solid Beano or Dandy man, occasionally drifting into the more exotic climes of Cheeky or Shiver and Shake. But I was no longer ten - I was eleven and it was time to put away childish things. In September I would be going to big school, after all. I don't know if I had discovered the unknown pleasures of 2000AD by this point but I was certainly aware of the British Marvel comics, often just older American comics repackaged in black and white and on poorer quality paper for the British market, presumably because there was still a war on.
My eyes drifted over Twinkles and Buntys and Mistys and up until I saw it - glossy and magnificent and priced and an eye-watering 45p ("cheap") in bright red curling script: MAD. It looked so exciting. The colours weren't made of blotchy, pointillist dots, the front cover was painted! The back cover featured a full colour cartoon of a man committing suicide: the front cover featured a sign saying "Last Gas for 25 Miles" and a man standing beside it burping while a woman with a petrol can looked nonplussed. I didn't know what any of it meant barring the fact that the magazine was advertising itself with a massive belch - this was not a slap up feed in the last panel - this was anarchy! I chanced my arm with my Dad, well aware that it was four times as expensive as the Beano. But he emitted the customary grunt he reserved for producing his wallet and bought it for me.
I spent the train journey looking over the top of my new magazine wondering if the volcanic changes occurring within me were visible on my face. Were my hands shaking? Was I visibly maturing? Were hairs sprouting on the back of my hands? My Dad couldn't have known what he had bought me - I didn't know what it was I was reading. First of all was the concept of satire: the magazine contained a parody of the James Bond film "For Your Eyes Only" here called, with scandalous daring, "For Her Thighs Only". The Beano would occasionally do a quick pastiche of a popular cultural trend, often featuring a cameo from a pop star or and obvious analogue, but this was a deconstruction of the ENTIRE FILM, forensically dissected and featuring not one iota of respect - this wasn't good-natured fun, the writers clearly thought this film was shit and didn't care who knew about it. Also, the caricatures by my second favourite artist Mort Drucker actually looked like the people they were supposed to be, and when he drew a 2CV it was recognisably a 2CV. It was thrilling. There were mentions of sex to add to the suicide jokes. I could feel my voice breaking, my plums edging down my thighs like nervous abseilers.
Better still was a musical about the mafia drawn by my favourite artist, Jack Rickard. A musical, about organised crime...in a comic! Jack Rickard normally did the painted covers of the magazine's mascot Alfred E Neuman but his pen and wash style inside the magazine that made me giddy with excitement. I remember trying to copy his tiny drawing of Mafia Boss Don Carlo, judging it to be a perfect drawing. Even today it has a sumptuous elegance, a clarity and weight. I could copy Jack Rickard but I could never draw like him. But I spent years trying - drawing my own comic, another feeble variant on Mad like Cracked or Frantic, which I called with the accuracy that comes from a total lack of self-awareness Desperate. It had a mascot with a big nose and a woolly hat who might have drooled. I forget his name but it would have been one of those Mad magazine names: James Arthur Gerflinken or Roger C Kerplunkish.
The other day my friend Paddy, who is moving house, sent me a picture of some old comics he had found and there, second from the right, was MY copy of Mad. I mean I had other issues - I bought it on and off for years and it opened up whole worlds: American TV I would never see, Jewish humour, sex, death, shoes that made the noise "gershplatt". Al Jaffee's woodcut vandalism opened me up to Surrealism, Jack Rickard's covers made me want to paint faces, the writing of Dick de Bartolo and Lou Silverstone is paying off in ways I never thought possible: last year scripting a comic book version of A Christmas Carol for The Brexit magazine was my Mad magazine dream come true.
I bit Paddy's hand off for that copy of the magazine and with supreme generosity he just gave it to me. Its next to me on the desk. Every image inside is seared into my brain, every bad joke. This is where it all comes from, the UR text, I learned everything from Mad Magazine.
Except "What, me worry?" I still worry. The Tao of Alfred E Neuman was sadly lost on me.
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