Sunday Mailbag

Q: How do I submit work to MAD?

A: I get this one a lot. The answer is it depends. If you are going to submit really excellent work in an effort to steal my job, please submit it to:

MAD Magazine
C/O:  Dr. Op Dedd
43 Skidoo Ave. Suite 0
Nowheresville, NY 0U812

However if you are looking to submit less dangerous work, either writing or art, you are in luck! MAD just put up a web page where you can upload samples for them to peruse at their leisure! Here’s some of what they say on that page about what they are looking for:

FROM THE MAD SUBMISSIONS PAGE:

We’re interested in material focusing on evergreen topics, such as dating, family, school and work, plus topical material about celebrities, sports, politics, news and social trends. In addition, we will consider submissions for our Fundalini Pages and annual MAD 20 (The Dumbest People, Events and Things of the Year). We also welcome submissions for our Strip Club (artist-writers or artist-writer teams preferred).

Do not include more than three article ideas in a single submission. And please note: We will not consider movie or television satires, rewrites of established MAD premises, your take on existing features, cover ideas, or gags with Alfred E. Neuman.

That means they don’t want to see you write a “Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions”, a “Horrifying Clich?¬©s”, or some other MAD staple. As I have written here before, your best bet to “break into” MAD, outside of using a crowbar and glass cutter, is to come up with something for the Strip Club, or a one to two page feature that is not time-specific (not dependent on some “hot” topic that will be irrelevant is a month).

Here is a link to that submissions page again. Good luck, and stay away from my assignments! :p

Thanks to R.D. Griffin for the question. If you have a question you want answered for the mailbag about cartooning, illustration, MAD Magazine, caricature or similar, e-mail me and I’ll try and answer it here!