Coury Turczyn
In the ’50s, a fresh style of music was bustling its way into movie and TV soundtracks: jazz. Previously, movie music meant sweeping orchestral themes or traditional Broadway-style musicals. But with the growing...
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Galleries
Modes and Motors: an art deco introduction to GM’s Styling Section of 1938
“Out of the merger of art, science and industry have come new techniques that have within themselves the ability to create an entirely new pattern and setting for the life of the world.” –Modes and Motors...
Stereo Action: introducing the new world of music beyond mono
Imagine living in a world of mono sound—records, movies, radio—and then suddenly having the option to hear music with the three-dimensional depth and scale of stereo reproduction. Add to that the sound-quality benefits...
The cynical, beautiful (and bleakly humorous) comics art of 1920s German ‘notgeld’ money
In 1920s Germany, the post-World War I economy was in a disastrous shambles. The official Reichsbank note was all but worthless. By the end of 1923, one American dollar was worth 4,210,500,000,000 marks. Government...
Matthew Foltz-Gray: the last newspaper comic-strip artist
Comic strips as an art form have seen better days. As the fortunes of the newspaper industry have waned, so has the life force of comics: page space. Comics have shrunk along with ambition, with syndicates and editors...
Advice from 1959 on how to survive a nuclear attack (with cool illustrations)
Back in the lost age of innocence known as the “pre-9/11” era, the idea that America could face a devastating attack from some far-off enemy seemed like a quaint relic of the Cold War. After all, there was...
Horrific food of the 1970s
With its uncontrolled pollution, rampant government corruption, frequent energy shortages, violent social unrest and division, and a meaningless war sacrificing too many lives, the 1970s now seem like a golden age of...
FUTURAMA: A tour of GM’s vision for the all-new, redesigned America of 1960
In 1939, the future didn’t look so bright. The U.S. was still mired in The Depression and Hitler’s invasion of Poland foreshadowed world conquest and inevitable war. Yet, despite of these bleak times, the...
Stories
A day in the life of MAD Magazine
Nick Meglin worked at MAD Magazine for 48 years, working his way up from contributing writer to editor in chief, a position he held for 20 years before retiring in 2004. Meglin led MAD in the post-William Gaines years...
Q&A: cartoon artist Jhonen Vasquez and the return of ‘Invader Zim’
Jhonen Vasquez was born to be a comic book artist—he started drawing as a child and hasn’t stopped since, though it wasn’t his primary career aspiration. He simply enjoys illustrating. His first published comic...
