Mad #272
☆ Be the first to review + Add to your collection — Join freeMad #272 captures ALF at the precise apex of the character's cultural dominance — the issue hit newsstands in July 1987 while ALF's second season was ramping up, the period when the show reached its highest Nielsen ratings and became a full-blown merchandise phenomenon. Mad's decision to put ALF on the cover — sharing a playing-card split with mascot Alfred E. Neuman — was the magazine's clearest signal that it recognized ALF as the defining pop-culture property of that television season. The interior parody 'ARFul,' produced by Dick DeBartolo and Mort Drucker, represents Mad at its classic form: the magazine's most in-demand writer-artist team applying their craft to the era's hottest sitcom. For historians of 1980s satire media, the issue is a precise timestamp of the overlap between NBC's Monday-night dominance and Mad's role as the era's pre-eminent mainstream satirist.
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By July 1987, Mad was operating under the editorial team of Nick Meglin and John Ficarra, who had taken over from the long-tenured Al Feldstein in 1985 and were actively chasing the biggest television targets of the moment. Cover artist Richard Williams, who painted nearly every Mad cover throughout the mid-to-late 1980s, rendered the ALF-and-Alfred E. Neuman playing-card image that became the issue's identifying visual. The pairing of writer Dick DeBartolo — billed by Mad itself as its 'Maddest Writer' — with Mort Drucker for the ALF parody was the magazine's standard formula for major television spoofs and reflected the editorial confidence that the feature warranted its top creative resources.
Trivia · 8 facts
- Published July 1987 by E.C. Publications, Inc. (EC); 52 pages.
- Cover art by Richard Williams depicts ALF and Alfred E. Neuman on opposite corners of a playing card — one of Williams's prolific run of Mad covers throughout the 1980s.
- Lead parody feature 'ARFul' spoofs the NBC sitcom ALF (which premiered September 22, 1986), written by Dick DeBartolo and illustrated by Mort Drucker.
- The issue also contains 'Forget Smart,' a spoof of the TV series Get Smart, scripted by Dick DeBartolo and Donald K. Epstein with art by Angelo Torres.
- 'A Mad Look at Fast Food' is written and drawn by Sergio Aragonés; 'Mad's Alibis For All Occasions' is scripted by Tom Koch with art by Jack Davis — both stalwart contributors.
- Edited under the Meglin/Ficarra co-editorship, which began in 1985 after Al Feldstein's retirement, marking a new editorial era for the magazine.
- The ALF TV show, which the issue parodies, was at the height of its popularity in 1987: its second season became its highest-rated, finishing tenth overall in Nielsen rankings.
- ALF was co-created and performed by Paul Fusco, with Tom Patchett as co-creator; by the time this issue appeared, the character had expanded into merchandise, an animated spinoff, and broad mainstream saturation — making a Mad cover treatment a cultural inevitability.
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Reprinted in Svenska Mad #2/1988 (1988), Svenska Mad #3/1988 (1988), Mad Special [Mad Super Special] #80 (1992), Mad Special [Mad Super Special] #86 (1993), Mad Special [Mad Super Special] #87 (1993), Mad Special [Mad Super Special] #89 (1993), Mad for Decades #[nn] (2007), Mad's Greatest Artists: Sergio Aragonès #[nn] (2010), Mad's Greatest Writers: Frank Jacobs #[nn] (2015), Mad #18 (2021), Mad #21 (2021)
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