Mad magazine: Encyclopedia II - Mad magazine - Recurring images and references

Mad magazine - Recurring images and references

Regular Mad readers have been treated to a large number of recurring in-jokes, including Neuman's catch phrase "What? Me worry?", as well as such words as potrzebie, axolotl, Melvin, and Cowznofski. In the 1950s, the magazine received a fee to promote the soft drink Moxie, and that product's logo would occasionally appear in illustrations. This experiment was an attempt by Feldstein to convince Gaines that the magazine could profit by carrying legitimate advertising.

Other visual elements are sheer whimsy and frequently appear in the artwork without context or explanation. Among these are a potted plant labelled Arthur (rumored to be based on art director John Putnam's marijuana plant); a domed trashcan wearing an overcoat, the Mad Zeppelin (which more closely resembles an elongated hot air balloon); and an emaciated long-beaked creature who went unidentified for decades before being dubbed "Flip the Bird." The mysterious name "Max Korn" has popped up for years; reader requests to clarify the reference have been greeted with increasingly outlandish "explanations." In late 1964, Mad was tricked into purchasing the "rights" to an optical illusion in the public domain, featuring a sort of three-pronged tuning fork whose appearance defies physics. The magazine dubbed it the Mad poiuyt after the six rightmost letter keys on a QWERTY keyboard in reverse order, not realizing that the existing image was already known to engineers and usually called a blivet.

The word "hoohah" was a running gag in-joke in the early years of Mad, often exclaimed by characters in the comic book issues written and edited by Harvey Kurtzman. Its somewhat Eastern European feel was a perfect fit for the New York Jewish style of the magazine. Kurtzman liked to use Yiddish expressions and nonsense words for a humorous effect, and the very first story in the first issue of Mad was "Hoohah!", illustrated by Jack Davis. According to some sources, the word "hoohah" has been traced to the early 20th Century, although the actual origin is unknown (although it might have originated from the Hungarian word for wow which is hűha [1]).

"It's crackers to slip a rozzer the dropsy in snide" was a non sequitur-ish phrase that found its way into Mad on several occasions, though it has been suggested that this is slang meaning "it is foolhardy to bribe a policeman with counterfeit money."

Mad cartoonists have often drawn caricatures of themselves, other contributors and the editors into the articles, most famously the character Roger Kaputnik in "The Lighter Side Of...", who is the spitting image of Dave Berg. Meanwhile, the magazine's photos have typically featured the same Mad staffers.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Recurring images and references", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki