While no-one could have confused that fantasy note for anything real, according to Gaines’s biographer Frank Jacobs, enterprising readers cut the notes out of their magazines and managed to use them in Las Vegas money-changing machines, triggering yet another visit to MAD’s offices by federal authorities seeking to stamp out this particular counterfeit. Along with some mild numismatic groaners about various coin denominations, the page concluded with the depiction of a parody three dollar bill with a vignette featuring the leering imbecility of a bewigged Alfred E. 18, Bob Clarke and William Garvin teamed together to produce a tweak of coin collecting entitled “Mad Mintlies”.
The resulting volume of mail to that agency promoted a courtesy call to the magazine’s offices by two federal agents. Edgar Hoover for their “draft dodger card”.
by running an article on fictitious board games, describing one called “Draft Dodger” that invited readers to write to Director J. Gaines and his stable of writers and illustrators had not only created a splash in American popular culture, but also ruffled official feathers besides. From an adult’s retrospective, much of its humor now seems puerile and mildly sexist, but at the time each issue had a madcap intensity to it that suggested a printed equivalent of a Marx Brothers’ movie. Moreover, the legal backlash against MAD’s frequent satirical takes on popular culture were also important for establishing the definitional boundaries and defense of parody in modern American law. For the cultural standards and inhibitions of the time, MAD Magazine was an anarchic breath of fresh air. Comics, and shortly thereafter as a stand-alone magazine. William Maxell Gaines (1922-1992) founded MAD in 1952 first as a comic within the stable of E.C. Neuman, as a guide through a world that often made no sense.
Any teenager with the least hint of rebelliousness towards authority relied upon MAD’s zany humor and irreverent satire, symbolized by the stupefied figurehead of Alfred E. For a certain, and probably male, adolescent coming of age in mid-twentieth century United States, following the antics of MAD Magazine was a regular literary indulgence.
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