Mad #428
☆ Be the first to review + Add to your collection — Join freeMad #428 (April 2003) represents the magazine at the height of its early-2000s pop-culture satire cycle, anchoring its lead feature to Peter Jackson's blockbuster The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers — one of the most culturally dominant films of that moment — under the department title 'Breaking a Nasty Hobbit.' Mad had long established the convention that a parody earning its own multi-page lead treatment served as a cultural barometer: if the magazine came after your film, you had genuinely permeated the national conversation. The issue also reflects EC Publications' ongoing editorial rhythm of pairing a prestige-property lead parody with Sergio Aragonés's ever-present margin cartoons and the perennial Spy vs. Spy strip, the combination that had defined the magazine's identity for decades. Additionally, the inclusion of a satirical riff on the 2003 Oscar ceremony and a Daredevil-themed humor piece captures the magazine functioning as a real-time comic record of early-2000s pop culture.
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By April 2003, Mad was published monthly by EC Publications, Inc., operating out of 1700 Broadway, New York — a title that had survived every shift in American media culture since Harvey Kurtzman and William Gaines launched it in 1952. The magazine had been running under DC/Warner ownership for years by this point, yet continued to credit itself under the EC Publications imprint and maintained its staff's self-deprecating house style, billing contributors as 'the usual gang of idiots.' The lead Lord of the Rings parody was written by Desmond Devlin with art by Hermann Mejia, two of the magazine's go-to creative pairings for film satires during this era.
Trivia · 8 facts
- Published April 1, 2003, by E.C. Publications, Inc. (New York); cover art by Dale Stephanos.
- Lead feature: 'Bored of the Rings — The Two+ Hours' (department: 'Breaking a Nasty Hobbit'), a full movie parody of The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, written by Desmond Devlin with art by Hermann Mejia.
- Includes 'Mad Sizes Up the 2003 Oscars — Best Actress' (department: 'We'd Like to Spank the Academy Part 2'), written by David Shayne, Barry Liebmann, Mike Snider, and Greg Leitman, with art by Harry North and Rick Tulka.
- Contains 'A Mad Look at Video Gamers' (department: 'Serge-In General'), written and drawn by Sergio Aragonés — part of his unbroken run of margin and feature contributions to nearly every issue of the magazine.
- Includes 'Mad's Not So Daring Outtakes from Daredevil' (department: 'Blind Man's Fluff'), a humor piece riffing on the 2003 Ben Affleck Daredevil film.
- Also features 'The Employing Guise' and 'Disposable Camera Wedding Photos That Didn't Make the Album,' contributing to the issue's characteristic mix of pop-culture parody and everyday-life satire.
- Sergio Aragonés's 'Drawn-Out Dramas' margin cartoons appear throughout the issue, continuing a feature that has run in essentially every issue of Mad since #76.
- The regular Spy vs. Spy strip appears in the issue, maintaining the recurring feature that has been a Mad staple since its debut in 1961.
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Reprinted in Mad's Greatest Artists: Sergio Aragonès #[nn] (2010)
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