Mad #501 (John Ficarra) - First Quarterly Issue - October 2009

The good news is that there is a number 501 and it has 56 pages.  The bad news is that seven pages are real ads, three pages are reprints and ten pages are reserved for the "Fundalini Pages" and "Strip Club" (translation: content not good enough to stand on its own).  For the most part, the Mad humor of the past is missing from this issue like the "M" is missing from the name of founder William M. Gaines.

The best of the issue is the movie parody ("Harry Plodder Is a Hot-Blooded Putz") by Desmond Devlin and Hermann Mejia.  Devlin is the veteran writer who always gives us a clever story.  I like the part where Headmaster Doubledork is forced to drink a whole can of Mountain Dew.  The drawings by Mejia are good but I think that Mort Drucker would have done a better job.  Drucker was missing from the issue except for two panels of "The Planet That Went Ape" reprint from 1973.

Other good articles were the Star Trek parodies by Sergio Aragones and Frank Santopadre, and the familiar "Fold-In" by Al Jaffee.  Other than the Fundalini/Strip stuff, the worst article was the unfunny "MisMatch.com" internet parody.  Other tacky but not very funny features were "Michael Jackson Dead at 50", "ScamWow!", and "The Hardships Faced by the Super Obese of American's Wild West."  I can only hope that number 502 will be better. [JAM 8/20/2009]

Departments:
Dollars Incensed - The Money You Could Be Saving
Eventing Our Spleen - The Mad Quarterly Report
Random Acts of Mindless - The Fundalini Pages  [Celebrity Cause-of-Death Betting Odds - Kim Kardashian]
After the Glove is Gone - A Brutally Honest Michael Jackson Obituary
Going over a Radcliffe - Harry Plodder is a Hot-Blooded Putz
Joke And Dagger - Spy vs. Spy
Chasing Its Own Tale - Be Confidential
The Apple of Our Ire - The New iPhone Apps Are Here!
The Agony of De-Tweet - William Shatner Twitters While Watching Star Trek
There's No Displaced Like Home - Mad's Guide to Making a Recently-Released Gitmo Detainee Feel Welcome in Your Town
Meet Market - Mis-Match.com
Serge-In General - A Mad Look at Star Trek
There's a Soaker Born Every Minute - A TV Commercial We'd Like to See
All Fat And No Cowboy - The Hardships Faced by the Super Obese of America's Wild West
The Republican Partying - Sanford and Sin
Pen And Stink - The Mad Strip Club
The Articles Formerly Known as Reprints - The Mad Vault
Observation Dreck - The All-New What the Heck is the Difference

Fold-In - Breakfast