Photo: Mad Magazine
What, me worry?
For some of the current late-night TV hosts, the answer is yes when it comes to MAD Magazine‘s newly released June issue.
A few, though, manage to escape the 73-year-old humor magazine’s crosshairs.
The cover, revealed earlier this month and illustrated by longtime Mad artist Tom Richmond, imagines a sleepover featuring several of late night’s biggest names. Under the header “MAD Stays Up for Late Night,” Jimmy Fallon spins a ghost story while Stephen Colbert and Seth Meyers hover over a Ouija board. Jon Stewart paints John Oliver’s nails, Jimmy Kimmel snacks on chips, and David Letterman curls up in a sleeping bag—unaware that MAD mascot Alfred E. Neuman is doodling “Putz” across his face with a marker.
The issue’s actual content, though, falls well shy of the well-considered cover’s promise.
Basically a compilation of late night-themed send-ups from the magazine’s past with a few fresh features sprinkled in, “MAD Stays Up for Late Night” opens with a table of contents accompanied by an archival illustration of Johnny Carson at his desk, surrounded by short-lived daytime/late night talk show hosts such as Joan Rivers, Tony Danza and Pat Sajak.
Following “A MAD Look at Late Night TV” (à la the magazine’s recurring series of cartoon vignettes), the first major feature is “The 38 Worst Things About Late Night TV!” Though pretty pointed/sometimes vicious (as is the magazine’s well-established style), the recycled countdown instantly dates itself with repeated digs at David Letterman, the premise that Stephen Colbert still hosts The Colbert Report, and references to Last Call with Carson Daly, Craig Ferguson’s The Late Late Show, and Lopez Tonight.
There is a seemingly new, late-night talk show-set installment of the long-running “Spy vs. Spy” capers (wait, there’s now a grey spy?!), followed by dusty “MAD Deconstructs” breakdowns of The Colbert Report and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart (meaning, back when his name was in the title).
The rest of the fiftysomething-page issue is largely filled by rehashed and generic TV-themed satires—save for an easy “Guest Types You’ll See on Late Night TV” (e.g. The Former Child Star, The Rebranded Comedian), and “A Eulogy for Colbert’s Late Show.”
The rhyming eulogy, accompanied by a sharp illustration by Hermann Mejia, is clearly the issue’s freshest content, with allusions to the charity auction Colbert has been running during his farewell season, and an excerpt from the Bad Bunny “Questionert” released in January.
The themed issue features not one but two of MAD‘s trademark Fold-Ins. One is a previously published nod to Letterman’s heyday, while the other is brand-new, featuring Colbert about to blast off astride a rocket with a crudely illustrated Seth Meyers, Jimmy Kimmel and Jimmy Fallon waving goodbye below. (We wouldn’t dare spoil that completed Fold-In’s message.)
Interestingly, outside of Seth Meyers’ inclusion on the cover, that Fold-In’s drawing of him appears to be the Late Night host’s only other appearance/mention in “MAD Stays Up for Late Night.” Similarly, though John Oliver is also featured on the cover, he and Last Week Tonight are the target of zero zingers.
Bill Maher of Real Time, meanwhile, is ignored entirely—absent from the “all-stars” cover and not alluded to once on the inside pages.