Mad About The Seventies Review
A nostalgic review from the pen of Barry Harter. Excerpt follows:
Mad About the Seventies is a loving look back at a decade that began in turmoil and ended in excess. Each era, 1970 to 1973, 1974 to 1976 and 1977 to 1979, is explained with a forward featuring reproductions of covers and background on the stories and times.
Read on for the full review!
Mad About the Seventies
Review by Barry Harter
Mad in the Seventies became an American institution - a rite of passage for the coveted demographic audience in pre- through post teens, but an enigma that survived for roughly half a century without selling advertising space.
Sales figures peaked for the publication during the “Me” decade and rightly so. Mad has always proved to be the perfect funhouse mirror reflecting American culture with its sophomoric, but smart, humor. Since its creation in 1952, Mad has blazed periodical trails much the same way All in the Family and Saturday Night (Live) did for television, exploring avenues most mainstream titles shied from until made publicly palatable.
What I remember most about Mad is the irreverence Editor Al Feldstin promoted and translated across generations allowing us to laugh so hard we cried tears of joy rather than tears of sorrow at the true state of affairs surrounding us.
Born in 1966, I was a child of the seventies discovering Mad with vengeance at some unforgotten point. Cutting my eyeteeth on comics, it was a natural progression to Mad Magazine, but the stigma it carried didn’t make it very popular with my parents, so most of my early reading was done at the magazine section of A&P and Safeway.
My mother, being a champion coupon clipper, made sure I had plenty of time to read each issue from cover-to-cover. It also kept me from making horrible mistakes like bringing her a 20-ounce can of beans when the coupon she had entrusted me with clearly read 18 ounces.
But, as Peter David would say, I digress.
Over time, I was able to accumulate a collection of Mad Magazines and the paperback reprints published by Warner and Signet.
They introduced me to writers Dick DeBartolo, Desmond Devlin, Frank Jocobs, Tom Koch, Arnie Kogen and Lou Silverstone; writer-artists Sergio Aragones, Dave Berg, Don Edwin, Al Jaffee, Don Martin and Antonio Prohias and artists Bob Clarke, Jack Davis, Mort Drucker, Angelo Torres, and Wally Wood - better known as the “usual gang of idiots”.
They, in turn, were shepherded by patriarch and owner William Gaines, a success story in himself, assuming ownership of a struggling comic book company from his overbearing father and turning out some of the best horror stories ever translated into four colors and text.
With the fallout from Eastes Kafauver and his Senatorial watchdog group that killed most crime and horror comicsin the early fifties, EC introduced its “New Direction” which withered on the racks.
But, under the leadership of Editor Harvey Kurtzman, Mad was born.
Kurtzman left after 28 issues to pursue a similar venture with Playboy founder and publisher Hugh Hefner and Feldstein assumed control and guided the publication through its formative years and into the future.
Mad About the Seventies is a loving look back at a decade that began in turmoil and ended in excess. Each era, 1970 to 1973, 1974 to 1976 and 1977 to 1979, is explained with a forward featuring reproductions of covers and background on the stories and times.
For those who remember the decade born in the uniform of denim and rebellion and laid to rest in polyester and conformity, Mad About the Seventies is a time machine for the soul.
For those born too late to remember much more than re-runs of the MaryTyler Moore Show, Mad About the Seventies is everything the decade was - big, excessive and fun.
Four out of five stars only because it doesn’t physically transport you back.
View Mad About The Seventies image slideshow.
Learn more about Mad About The Seventies here at the Graphic Novel Archive.