A Mad Year

Year-end wrap-ups have become a mind-numbing fixture for media outlets desperate to fill slow December news days. But few have quite the same skewed POV as Mad Magazine, whose ninth annual list of the year’s 20 dumbest people, events and things hits stands Dec. 20 in issue #473.

Mad editor John Ficarra says the list is a yearlong project for the “usual gang of idiots” who put out the magazine. And luckily for them 2006 had more than its fair share of candidates.

Among the obvious events to make the list were the war in Iraq, Vice President Cheney accidentally shooting his hunting buddy, “Survivor” winner Richard Hatch failing to pay taxes on his million-dollar prize, Mel Gibson’s drunken screed, the rise of YouTube, Paris Hilton’s short-lived vow of celibacy, and the Bush administration’s assault on civil rights.

The events that make the list are a combination of the obvious and dumb luck, Ficarra says. “I think we knew the war in Iraq was probably going to be on the list just from the way it was going, so that was pretty much a no-brainer. And then you have the things that fall into the comedy writer’s lap like the Mel Gibson tirade.”

Doing humor in a magazine requires its own approach. Ficarra says Mad prefers high-impact visuals, but also has the space to go in more depth.

“We can do a takeoff of a movie poster, or a take off of YouTube, where we can really capture the flavor of whatever it is that we’re spoofing and make it look just like it,” he says. “(Readers) can go back and take a second or third look, especially on the denser ones. We did YouTube this year and there’s an awful lot on that page you might not get the first time out.” 

Here are Ficarra’s comments on a few of the items on the list:

* On Hatch, portrayed in the magazine with tax forms tattooed all over his body in a spoof of the TV show “Prison Break”: “You have to wonder what is going through this guy’s mind. Half of America saw you win the money, you have to think the IRS saw you too?”

* On Hilton’s celibacy vow, portrayed with a faux cover to No-Action Comics No. 1 (Final issue!) drawn by J. Scott Campbell: “Paris keeping away from sex is like a dog promising not to sniff a fire hydrant. It’s just not going to happen.” (Click on image for a closer look.)

* On the Cheney shooting accident, which also made the cover: “That happened very early in the year and yet it made our cover because it seems like such a dumb thing.”

While a few late-breaking dumb things were past the issue’s deadline, such as the O.J. Simpson book disaster and Britney Spears’ underwear forgetfulness, there was one nice coincidence. The Gibson item is illustrated with a picture of the actor on the cover of a book titled “Mel Kampf” that is published by Regan Books, which was to publish the O.J. Simpson confessional book and whose founder, Judith Regan, was ousted last week in part because of anti-Semitic comments.

“We’re not as smart as we look having that on there, but I’m very happy that it is on there,” Ficarra says.

Mad has managed to survive where other humor mags have not for a number of reasons, but Ficarra
points in particular to the way it appeals both to young and old readers.

Ficarra says they try to layer the magazine so it appeals to different ages. “We don’t use four letter words in the magazine. It makes our job harder and it keeps us tighter as writers.” Sexual content is done more with words and visuals.

Mad readers follow a typical pattern of giving up the magazine around age 16 and coming back to in their 20s.

“You go away (from Mad) for a while and then you’re out of college and on your first business trip, stuck in an airport on a layover, milling around the magazine shop and you’ll go, ‘Oh, Mad! I haven’t seen that in a while.’ You pick it up and we’ve got you back again,” Ficarra says. “Anecdotally, we hear that story all the time.”