Monday MADness: The New MAD Online!

Last week MAD launched it’s new website and announced a lot of plans for a renewed and higher profile online and social media  presence. Plans include multiple daily original cartoons and content on the MAD website, and a new blog coming this summer. On the social media side you’ll already see MAD has a very active Twitter and Instagram feed with multiple daily gags, comics and images. They also plan on posting a lot of original content on Facebook, but that is all going to be published in Russian to cut to the chase. There is also going to be an upcoming MAD podcast hosted by editor Allie Goertz and produced by editor Casey Boyd, which will feature interviews with some of the Usual Gang of Idiots and celebrity fans of MAD, as well as scripted comedy bits, original music other MADness.  This past Friday MAD launched a bi-weekly MAD Twitch channel hosted by editor Dan Telfer, which will feature comedy guests, live drawing, game challenges, and other absurdity. There’s a lot going on beyond just the pages of the magazine.

MAD‘s online presence has been mocked as substandard for a long time by your usual crop of internet geeks that get somehow feel cheated if they are not supplied with free entertainment to consume 24/7, but what many people do not know is that earlhy on MAD was way ahead of it’s time in the online world. Before the days of Facebook, Twitter, Instragram, etc. circa 2000, MAD spent several months posting original content on its website, then called madmag.com. Called the “MADness of the Week”, these were specially written and drawn features that were sometimes “rollover” images or illustrations that had pop up gags, sometimes static images with text and later included flash-based shorts with limited animation. MAD had their freelancers produce the work, both writing and art, and then would produce the features and post them weekly. This led to a lot of quick turnaround jobs for freelancers. My first “published” work for MAD was actually on their website in August of 2000… an image of the major presidential candidates as contestants on “Presidential Survivor” posted above. There were gag “bios” that popped up when you rolled over the image.

MAD also had a short lived feature on AOL’s “RED Page”, which was a special teen orientated section for subscribers. MAD did a daily gag feature that included a single cartoon. MAD paid freelancers such as myself to produce the cartoon and (presumably) to write the gags. Here are a few of the ones I did for that little project:

It looks like we can expect a hugely ramped up MAD web presence. Fa fa fa!