Tuesday, October 7, 2008

Fear of MAD

When I was a kid growing up in Chicago in the 1960's, my next door neighbor, George Perhatch, was an avid collector of MAD magazine. We were good friends (we were both around 6 or 7 years old) but I did not share his interest in MAD, at first. MAD used to scare me. I was still at an age where I took everything seriously, or at face value. I used to tell Georgie that everyone in MAD seemed to be mean to each other. In one of Georgie's paperback book collections of MAD, I remember a panel where a little girl had a little boy tied up and gagged. To me it was horrifying. She had him laying on his back, and was pressing his head down, so it would get hit by a toy train as it went around the track. I knew it was a gag, but I took the situation seriously. I knew it would still hurt. How could that little girl do that? It was inhuman!

MAD magazine gave me a headache. It actually made me queasy. And Alfred E. Neuman's smiling face on the cover- It really bothered me that he seemed happy, indifferent to the cruelty I saw inside the pages. I just couldn't understand.

I even developed a fear of MAD. It was like a fear of the unknown. Mad seemed to endorse cruelty. It got to the point of where I couldn't even look at them because it stimulated either fear or disgust. Georgie picked up on this. One time we were "camping" in his back yard, in a small tent. When I was inside the tent, Georgie went inside the house and came back with an armload of MAD magazines, and unzipped the entrance and threw them all inside. I couldn't get out! I backed up in fear all the way to the back of the tent and couldn't get out! The memory is burned in my head.

To make matters worse, George kept pointing out that I kinda LOOKED like Alfred E. Neuman, and it bothered me to no end. His mother, not knowing of my neurosis, agreed!


I'm totally intrigued by those old publications now, but it took a long time for me to come to terms with the twisted ideas of MAD magazine.

It's strange to me, that today I am a cartoonist who specializes in MAD-like artwork.

-- Pat Moriarity
Blog: PAT MORIARITY 'N' STUFF
BIZ INFO: http://www.linkedin.com/in/patmoriarityart
HOME PAGE: http://www.patmoriarity.com
BUY ORIGINAL ART HERE: http://www.comicartcollective.com/cartoondepot/
VIDEO & ANIMATION: http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=PatMoriarityDotCom
MUSIC RELATED ART: http://www.myspace.com/rockstarart

8 comments:

--MC said...

I've been renewing my love for the old MAD lately, but it bothers me how much it's become a vehicle for product placements that Time Warner want to push.

Anonymous said...

Long live the late Harvey Kurtzman!

Mo said...

I LOVE the fact that "Muscles Moriarity" is so open about his past young life and fear of "Mad Magazine", and it's a damn adorable photo of a very sweet looking kid.

Jim Blanchard said...

I was ATTRACTED to the cruelty of MAD when I was very young! George Woodbridge totally turned me on as a 5-year-old! I still have a MAD Super Special I bought in 1971-- Funny post, Alfr— I mean Pat--

Anonymous said...

There was a rumor when I was around 10 that in order to work for them, you had to have a tattoo on your ass with the MAD logo. We also thought they were doing something illegal by parodying movies as if MAD was somehow under studios' radar.

Anonymous said...

I'd hate to hear what kind of trauma Car Toons might have caused you! Them Varmints!

JB Sapienza said...

wow. You do look like him...

Malachi Ward said...

I had a similar reaction to Mad as a child too. It wasn't just that people were mean, but so many of the drawings were so grotesque in comparison to whatever disney cartoon I liked at the time.