Versus No More (Patreon)

Here’s a little piece to commemorate the closing of MAD Magazine. I haven’t read an issue since the 80s, but MAD was a huge inspiration growing up. The incredibly wacky Don Martin strips, the detailed caricature of Mort Drucker, trying not to destroy the back cover to reveal the secrets of Al Jaffee’s fold-ins are still vivid memories to this day. But of course many people’s all-time favorite is Antonio Prohìas’ Spy vs. Spy. It was a completely wordless strip of two spies killing each other in increasingly convoluted ways. Prohìas retired in 1986 and passed away in 1998, but the strip remained a regular feature and even appeared in animations on MADtv and the Cartoon Network MAD series.

I had a paperback of Spy vs. Spy that showed the title characters shaking hands with suspicious grins and weapons behind their backs. With the closing of MAD, the spies can lay down their arms for the first time.