Quotes About Mad Magazine

“These were the kids who would take LSD for recreational purposes, who relied upon tape recorders to supply the weird studio effects their music required and who could repeat the cosmic wisdom of the Space Brothers as if it were the Pledge of Allegiance. Brought up on space heroes and super beings, as revealed to them in comic books and TV shows, the whole galaxy was their birthright, just as Mad magazine and cheap B-movies had shown them hows stupid and flimsy a construct daily life could be. To the subtle dismay of their parents, this was a generation capable of thinking the unthinkable as a matter of course. That their grand cosmological adventure should come to an end just as Neil Armstrong succeeded in bringing Suburbia to the Moon is another story and it will have to wait for another time.”

— Ken Hollings

“I had a few comics, but I was by no means a huge aficionado. I was more of a 'Mad Magazine,' 'Calvin & Hobbes' sort of nerd.”

— Robin Lord Taylor

“But in terms of satire and comedy, our biggest and earliest influence was Mad magazine.”

— Jerry Zucker

“My greatest thrill was the day Mad magazine spoofed 'Ghost.'”

— Jerry Zucker

“I was a big 'MAD Magazine' fan when I was a kid, and I read a lot of horror comics - I illustrated as well.”

— Joe Lo Truglio

“I was a huge fan of 'Mad' magazine when I was 11, 12, 13 years old. I'd scour used bookstores trying to find back issues, and I'd wait at the newsstand for a new issue to come out. My life revolved around it.”

— Al Yankovic

“I attended Art & Design High School, and at one point, you had to write about what you wanted to be when you grew up. I wrote that I wanted to be a writer for 'Mad' magazine.”

— Amy Heckerling

“Mostly it was Mad magazine. And I did read a lot of - I had a subscription when I was little, but I also had access to some old collections, the little paperbacks of the really good stuff.”

— Alison Bechdel

“The people who were in college in the '50s were my first real audience, and their kids, the people who found my records in the cabinet during their 'Mad 'magazine years picked me up also.”

— Tom Lehrer

“Uglier than death backin' outta the outhouse readin' mad magazine and crazy as a football bat.”

— Alan Moore

“Well I've made no secret of my life long love of MAD Magazine, it's probably my first and greatest influence in terms of my comic sensibilities. I've known John [Ficarra] for many years, and we've been friends. About four or five months ago, at a dinner in New York, John made the very nice offer of my being guest editor for an issue of MAD and I thought about it for about half a nanosecond and decided that was a pretty good idea.”

— Al Yankovic

“It's hard to say, I picked one of my favorite articles for the MAD vault. Which is one of the features of the Magazine so they don't have to actually pay artists or writers to come up with new stuff.”

— Al Yankovic

“Our magazine shelves are filled with crime and sex pulp-magazines that are being read and devoured by millions of young people ...
Scores are seeing each week the trash that Hollywood produces. Truly our children are movie mad.”

— Billy Graham

“My biggest influence growing up was Mad magazine, which is a very text-heavy form of visual satire. I didn't grow up wanting to draw donkeys and elephants with the names of politicians written across them.”

— Tom Tomorrow

“Einstein pronounced the doom of continuous or 'rational' space, and the way was made clear for Picasso and the Marx Brothers and Mad magazine.”

— Marshall McLuhan

“I think I'm equally as abusive as the editors normally are for the "Letters and Tomatoes" column, which is the fan mail part of MAD Magazine and an ongoing feature.”

— Al Yankovic