MADness #135: Ru Paul’s Drag Race!

Clicky to Embiggen…

Welcome to the beginning of the end.

MAD #12 (April 2020) was released shortly before the pandemic hit, but COVID had little to do with what was happening at MAD. This was the first issue that showed what MAD was going to be like going forward… issues built around a theme with features related to that theme curated from the archives. This issue’s theme was TV. Of the 56 pages in the magazine, only 13 featured all new material, not including the cover and the letters/table of contents pages. There were also a handful of pages that were colorized versions of previously B&W only art. I did the art for this two pager, written by Grant Reed. Here are the pencils:

It was difficult to tell if the new content was genuinely new submissions, or if these were pulled from the evergreen drawer and/or submissions that had already been accepted and paid for. I got a feeling it was a mix of the two, but the majority was of the latter variety. I seemed clear MAD was going through what they had left in the drawers and when that was used up, how much new material would be in each issue?

The MAD staff was also disappearing. Only 5 issues earlier the masthead listed a staff of seven, including VP & Executive Editor Bill Morrison, Art Director Suzy Hutchinson, editors Dan Telfer, Casey Boyd and Allie Goertz, and art department directors Doug Thompson and Bern Mendoza. This issue listed only five staffers, and two of them were new people brought in from other divisions. All the original editors had been let go.

The pandemic struck about a month after this issue dropped, which didn’t help matters but the freefall as already in full swing.

Toon in sometime soon for more of this sordid tale of MADness. There’s not a lot left.