MAD Magazine. Now on iPad. No Joke!
| From [IT’S NO JOKE: MAD MAGAZINE iPAD APP TO BE RELEASED ON APRIL FOOL’S DAY (ALFRED E. NEUMAN’S BIRTHDAY) | Mad Magazine]1: |
BURBANK, CA, March 30, 2012 – DC Entertainment today announced plans to release a new MAD Magazine iPad app complete with interactive features and exclusive content. The app will be released on April Fool’s Day, an appropriate date since it’s also the birthday of MAD’s infamous mascot, Alfred E. Neuman. The app will be free to download through the App Store and will include a mixture of free and paid content, including a free preview of the magazine.
Upon hearing of this app (which appears in your newsstand on the iPad), I had to have it! It’s been quite some time since I bought a physical copy of the magazine, but I had a collection growing up that may still be at a box at my mom’s. If she kept all the stuff I told her to throw out.
Anyway, even though “the usual gang of idiots” now has a lot of new faces from when I last read MAD regularly (some of the older folks surely have passed on), the magazine still pokes fun at everyone–and everything. And it’s still funny. The parody of Mike & Molly in the April 2012 issue had me laughing out loud (and for the record, I think I accidentally saw Mike & Molly on TV once).
About the iPad app: it’s similar to the Wired Magazine app. It’s not just digitized versions of the magazine, they actually put some thought into it. For example, the “marginals” by Sergio Aragones (drawings which appear in the margins of panels throughout the magazine) are easy to zoom in on and look at. Other elements are similarly zoomable. Even the classis Fold-In is accounted for! No folding your iPad required!
Perhaps the best part is that, unlike many magazines, you don’t pay a premium to be a digital-only subscriber. A regular print subscription is $20 (which, like a lot of publications, now includes digital). A digital-only subscription is $9.99–actually cheaper than a print subscription! You can also buy back issues for $1.99 or do a bi-monthly subscription for $1.99 as well.
Needless to say, I ponied up for a yearly subscription. I look forward to the June 2012 issue when it becomes available on my iPad.
