MAD’s 9-11 Cover Story

Over at The Idiotical, the Official Blog of MAD Magazine (this is a very UNofficial blog), they have posted the story behind the cover of MAD #411, otherwise known as the 9-11 cover. The tell the tale of how this:

replaced this:

at the very last minute, following the events of September 11th, 2001. MAD very correctly decided that, despite the innocent marathon scene, having a cover depicting a crowd of people running through the streets of New York with Alfred jumping a dead body would probably be taken in a different way after September 11th. I won’t recount the entire tale here, you can read about it on The Idiotical.

I did learn two new things from MAD‘s post. First, I didn’t know that associate art director Nadina Simon came up with and did that cover image. That is awesome, and so is Nadina. Second, that it was the printer that first questioned if they really wanted to go with that cover.

One thing they did not talk about in the post, was that after #411 came out I found untrimmed and unbound prints of that original cover, presumably taken from the printer by some unscrupulous employee before they were destroyed, showing up on eBay. I alerted the MAD folks and they and the printer dealt with it. I’m not sure how but I think they might have sent Sergio over to the seller’s house to go marginal on him.