ONLINE SYMPOSIUM:
The Usual Gang of Idiots and Other Suspects:
MAD Magazine and American Humor
A SYMPOSIUM ORGANIZED BY THE ROCKWELL CENTER FOR AMERICAN VISUAL STUDIES
Hijinks on the High Seas, 2022
Illustration for “Hijinks on the High Seas!” by John Ficarra, MAD #28, December 2022
Ink and Dr. Martin’s Dyes on Bristol board
Collection of Sam Viviano
Watch the Symposium
Program Overview:
Join us for this lively exploration of the art and history of MAD—the long-running humor magazine and counter-culture touchstone that has attracted readers and spoken truth to power for more than seven decades. MAD’s unique brand of subversive humor, as well as its evolution and impact, will be discussed by illustrators, cartoonists, editors, writers, historians, and collectors whose deep knowledge of the subject and personal contributions have sustained the magazine’s legacy over time.
The program is organized in conjunction with What, Me Worry? The Art and Humor of MAD Magazine at the Norman Rockwell Museum, on view until October 27, 2024.
Symposium Schedule
Friday, October 18 from 6 to 8:00 pm
Stephanie Haboush Plunkett, Chief Curator, Norman Rockwell Museum
A Legacy of Laughter: MAD Magazine and the Americanization of Jewish Humor
With Judith Yaross Lee, Ph.D., Distinguished Professor Emerita of Communication Studies, Ohio University
Begun modestly in 1952 as a comic book that parodied other comic books, MAD introduced millions of Americans to a Jewish way of looking and laughing at the world after it became a magazine in 1955. This multi-media talk by Judith Yaross Lee explores how MAD’s Jewish writers, and artists, and editors shaped its sense of humor and changed the course of American media, with a legacy that includes The Simpsons, The Onion, and Randy Rainbow. Dr. Lee is the editor of Seeing MAD: Essays on MAD Magazine’s Humor and Legacy, a collection of essays published in 2020 by the University of Missouri.
Saturday, October 19 from 10am to 3pm
With Steve Brodner, Illustrator, Cartoonist, and Educator; Co-Curator of What, Me Worry? The Art and Humor of MAD Magazine
Known in the fields of journalism and the graphic arts as a master and historian of the editorial idiom, Steve Brodner will explore MAD’s relevance within the history of visual satire. Presented through a lens of humor by artists across centuries, satire’s greater purpose has been to critique society’s ills and call attention to matters of social concern. A noted illustrator, caricaturist, visual journalist, author, and educator, Brodner has received many awards for his work, including the prestigious Herblock Prize, for 2024. He has been a regular contributor to The New Yorker, Rolling Stone, The Nation, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times, among others.
A panel of scholars will offer insights on the magazine’s unique cultural significance, and its impact and legacy. A discussion and question and answer period chaired by Judith Yaross Lee, Ph.D. will follow.
Topics and commentators include:
The “Obscure and Awesome” Women Cartoonists of MAD
Rachel Shteir, DFA, Head of Dramaturgy/Dramatic Criticism at the Theatre School at DePaul University
Mutually Assured Disparagement: MAD Magazine and the Early 1950s Cold War
James J. Kimble, Ph.D., Professor of Communication, College of Human Development, Culture, and Media, Seton Hall University
The Lighter—and Weightier—[MH1] Side of MAD, or, Everything I Needed to Know About Gender and Sexuality I Learned from Dave Berg
Ann M. Ciasullo, Ph.D., Core Director, Professor of English and Women, Gender, & Sexuality Studies, Gonzaga University
The Prohías Paradox: The Cold War Specificity and Existential Universality of “Spy vs. Spy”
Michael Socolow, Ph.D., Professor of Communication and Journalism, The University of Maine
Cartoonist and graphic novelist Peter Kuper will discuss his art and the legacy of Spy vs. Spy, live from the Artists’ Alley at New York Comic Con
Go behind the scenes at MAD with historian/author/collector Grant Geissman, and with Editor John Ficarra, Art Director Sam Viviano, and Writer Dick DeBartolo, who were at the heart of the magazine’s creative and publishing process for decades, working closely with the magazine’s artists, writers, and staff to create and produce its uproarious content. These gifted MAD insiders will share favorite stories from the field and reflect upon their most memorable experiences.
Join award-winning artists Ray Alma, Scott Bricher, Emily Flake, and Keith Knight for an inside look at the art and process of creating MAD’s infamous satirical illustrations and cartoons. The panel and discussion to follow will be chaired by Steve Brodner.
Symposium Participants and Bios
Ray Alma is an illustrator, caricaturist, and storyboard artist who has created art for MAD and many other magazines, newspapers, books, and television. In addition to his commercial projects, he is the director of The Ink Well Foundation, a cadre of cartoonists who travel to pediatric hospitals to draw for children. In 2010, he began volunteering for the USO, creating art at Veterans’ Hospitals and for American troops at home and abroad.
Scott Bricher is a prolific and versatile artist and musician who created art for MAD on a wide variety of subjects in both traditional and digital media from 1998 to 2019. Born in Columbus, Ohio, he studied at Parsons School of Design and the Art Students League in New York, where he built a freelance career as a designer, illustrator, painter, and concept artist. His clients have included Sesame Street Magazine, Ghostwriter, and 3-2-1 Contact Magazine, among others.
Steve Brodner is today’s foremost satirical illustrator and caricaturist. Acclaimed in the fields of journalism and the graphic arts as a master of the editorial idiom, he is a regular contributor to The Nation, The Washington Post, and The Los Angeles Times. Brodner’s art journalism has appeared in most major magazines and newspapers in the United States, such as Rolling Stone, The New York Times, The New Yorker, Esquire, Time, Mother Jones, Harper’s, and The Atlantic. His newsletter, This Week, can be found daily at stevebrodner.substack.com and weekly in The Nation. In 2008, Norman Rockwell Museum presented an exhibition of his work titled Raw Nerve: The Political Art of Steve Brodner.
Ann M. Ciasullo, Ph.D. is a Professor of English and Women, Gender, & Sexuality Studies at Gonzaga University. Her areas of expertise include literary theory and cultural studies, 19th and 20th century American literature, women writers, feminist theory, and popular culture. She has published on a wide range of topics, including women-in-prison narratives, bromance films, the television series Mad Men, theories of the women’s movement in the 1970s, and social justice in American literature. The Outsiders: Adolescent Longing and Staying Gold is her most recent publication.
Dick DiBartolo is known as The Giz Wiz and MAD’s Maddest Writer, having been featured in every issue of MAD for the past 50 years. As the Giz Wiz, he appears on Ask The Tech Guys, hosts The Giz Fiz, and does a weekly podcast with Chad Johnson on The Giz Wiz. Dick is also The Giz Wiz on ABC’s World News Now. He was an advisor to What, Me Worry? The Art and Humor of MAD Magazine.
John Ficarra was hired as Assistant Editor for MAD in 1980, shortly after his debut as a contributing writer. He became MAD’s Editor in Chief in 1985 (with Nick Meglin until 2004), a position that he retained until 2018. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Washington Post, Newsweek, AARP Magazine, and numerous other publications. He is currently a regular contributor of humor to the digital weekly Air Mail. He was an advisor to What, Me Worry? The Art and Humor of MAD Magazine.
James J. Kimble, Ph.D. is Professor of Communication, College of Human Development, Culture, and Media, Seton Hall University, specializing in the study of domestic propaganda. His books include Mobilizing the Home Front: War Bonds and Domestic Propaganda and The 10¢ War: Comic Books, Propaganda, and World War II. In 2018, his research on the identity of Rosie the Riveter went viral, appearing in People magazine and on the front page of the New York Times. He was co-curator of the Norman Rockwell Museum traveling exhibition, Enduring Ideals: Rockwell, Roosevelt, and the Four Freedoms.
Keith Knight is the creator of the weekly comic strip The K Chronicles, the weekly single panel comic (Th)ink, and the daily strip The Knight Life. In a style and wit reminiscent of MAD, Knight addresses serious social and political issues while incorporating signature humor. Woke, a television series partially based on Knight’s life, debuted on the Hulu streaming service in 2020; the second season became available in April 2022. He was an advisor to What, Me Worry? The Art and Humor of MAD Magazine.
Peter Kuper’s work appears in The New Yorker, The Nation, and MAD, where he has written and illustrated Spy vs. Spy for every issue since 1997. He is the co-founder of World War 3 Illustrated and has produced over two dozen books including Sticks and Stones, The System, Diario de Oaxaca, Ruins, and adaptations of many of Franz Kafka’s works. His most recent graphic novels include Kafkaesque, Heart of Darkness, and Insectopolis: A Natural History. In 2011, Kuper began teaching Harvard University’s first course dedicated to comics and graphic novels. He was an advisor to What, Me Worry? The Art and Humor of MAD Magazine.
Judith Yaross Lee, Ph.D. is Distinguished Professor Emerita at Ohio University and an award-winning teacher and scholar who has served as Distinguished Professor of Communication Studies and Director of the Central Region Humanities Center. She is internationally recognized as an authority on American literary humor from Mark Twain to the present, and is the author/editor of Seeing MAD: Essays on MAD Magazine’s Humor and Legacy, among other notable books on American humor studies. She was an advisor to What, Me Worry? The Art and Humor of MAD Magazine.
Stephanie Haboush Plunkett is the Chief Curator of Norman Rockwell Museum and Co-Curator of What, Me Worry? The Art and Humor of MAD Magazine. She has organized many exhibitions focused on the art of Norman Rockwell and the field of illustration, and leads the Rockwell Center for American Visual Studies, the first scholarly institute devoted to illustration. Drawing Lessons from the Famous Artists School; Enduring Ideals: Rockwell, Roosevelt & the Four Freedoms; Norman Rockwell: Drawings, 1911 to 1973; Tony Sarg: Genius at Play; and Leo Lionni: Storyteller, Artist, Designer are recent publications.
Rachel Shteir, DFA is Head of Dramaturgy/Dramatic Criticism at the Theatre School at DePaul University. She is an award-winning essayist, writer, and critic, and the author of Striptease: The Untold History of the Girlie Show, Gypsy: The Art of the Tease, and The Steal: A Cultural History of Shoplifting. Before going to Chicago in 2000, she taught at Yale, Carnegie Mellon University, NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, the Columbia University School of the Arts and the National Theatre Institute.
Michael J. Socolow is a Professor of Communication and Journalism at The University of Maine and a media historian whose research centers upon America’s original radio networks in the 1920s and 1930s. His scholarship on media history has appeared in Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, The Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media, Technology & Culture, and other journals, and was a Senior Fulbright Research Scholar at the News & Media Research Centre at the University of Canberra [Australia].
Sam Viviano is an award-winning humorous illustrator specializing in caricature and cartooning for magazines, books, and advertising. His first cover illustration for MAD appeared in issue #223, in June 1981. Eighteen years later, he became Art Director of MAD—a position that he held from 1999 to December 2017. His work has appeared in Rolling Stone, Family Weekly, Reader’s Digest, TV Guide, Family Weekly, Institutional Investor, HITS, Dynamite, and Bananas, among others. He was lead advisor to What, Me Worry? The Art and Humor of MAD Magazine.