From nojo:
Mad had a “reputation”. We had to campaign for permission to read it. Dad finally relented, and of course it didn’t take long until he was swiping our issues so he could read them.
Don’t recall what Dad thought of the infamous middle-finger cover. Not one of our favorites, although it’s inescapably memorable. Too on the nose.
Better: The cover with the giant barcode, stating they hope it breaks every supermarket scanner in the country. That was their response to being required to desecrate their cover with a barcode in the first place. That was Mad’s first barcode cover.
That was Mad.
We remember those covers. We remember those artists. We remember the cross-section of an engine, paired with a “happy section”. We remember the “Nixxon” sign above the White House — timed to when Enco/Esso changed its name — and the tagline “But it’s still the same old gas!” We remember that someone sent a letter to the editors on MADison Ave., the envelope bearing nothing but a smiling Alfred E. Neuman and a zip code. We remember the letter being successfully delivered.
We remember a lot. We haven’t looked at those issues in more than forty years.
And now, well, looks like it’s gone.