Mad #511
☆ Be the first to review + Add to your collection — Join freeMad #511 (October 2011) is the primary print monument to Spy vs. Spy's 50th anniversary — the strip having debuted in Mad #60 dated January 1961 — making this issue the in-magazine centerpiece of what was the most extensive institutional celebration the feature had ever received. The issue arrived at a moment when Mad's 'Usual Gang of Idiots' under long-serving editor John Ficarra was demonstrating that the magazine could still engage aggressively with contemporary pop culture, tackling targets as varied as the viral mobile game Angry Birds, the NBC sitcom Parks and Recreation (in a full-length spoof), Kim Kardashian, and Lady Gaga in a single issue. The Spy vs. Spy anniversary section also connected readers to the strip's origins as Cold War political allegory, keeping the work of Cuban exile Antonio Prohías in cultural conversation half a century after he walked into Mad's New York offices with the concept.
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Mad #511 was produced under executive editor John Ficarra — who had co-edited the magazine since 1984 alongside Nick Meglin and continued steering it solo after Meglin's 2004 retirement — and the issue's cover was painted by Charles Akins. The Parks and Recreation full-length parody inside was written by veteran Mad writer Arnie Kogen and drawn by Tom Richmond, who later noted it was the final installment of an eight-consecutive-issue run of full movie or TV parodies he had drawn for the magazine, a personal record for the artist. The Spy vs. Spy anniversary content in the issue was part of a coordinated year-long 2011 campaign by Mad — which also included a syndicated Sunday newspaper strip, custom action figures exhibited at San Diego Comic-Con, and the DC Comics reprint of Spy vs. Spy: The Complete Casebook — all organized around the strip turning 50.
Trivia · 7 facts
- Cover date: October 2011; cover art by Charles Akins, depicting a parody of the Angry Birds mobile game.
- Editor: John Ficarra, who had guided Mad since co-taking the helm in 1984 and was the sole executive editor from 2004 onward.
- Contains an in-magazine 50th-anniversary feature for Spy vs. Spy, the wordless Cold War satire strip created by Cuban expatriate Antonio Prohías that first appeared in Mad #60 (January 1961).
- Full-length Parks and Recreation TV parody written by Arnie Kogen and drawn by Tom Richmond — Richmond identified it as the last of eight consecutive issues in which he drew a full-length 'continuity' parody, a personal record.
- Additional satirical targets in the issue include Angry Birds, Kim Kardashian, and Lady Gaga (the latter covered by regular cartoonist Sergio Aragonés).
- The 50th-anniversary Spy vs. Spy celebrations in 2011 extended well beyond this issue: they included a short-lived syndicated Sunday comic strip distributed by Tribune Media Services and a group custom-figure show at San Diego Comic-Con 2011 held in the DC Comics booth.
- A contemporary tie-in publication — Spy vs. Spy: The Complete Casebook — was reprinted by DC Comics in 2011 as part of the same anniversary push, while a separate Top Secret Files trade paperback collecting Prohías and Peter Kuper strips also appeared that year.
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Reprinted in Mad #17 (2021)
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