25 Years Ago, ‘MAD’ Magazine Had to Change One of Its Covers Because of 9/11 - VICE

As was the case with many people in the entertainment industry, the folks at MAD magazine were forced to alter their future plans in the wake of the September 11th attacks.

For the long-running humor mag’s 411th issue, cartoonist John Caldwell drew up a cover poking fun at the upcoming 2001 New York City Marathon. The planned artwork featured MAD’s gap-toothed mascot, Alfred E. Neuman, mistaking the caution tape at a crime scene for the race’s finish line as a detective outlined a corpse with chalk. In the background, other participants ran through the city streets.

“Like the rest of the nation, we were stunned by the 9/11 attacks, and it just didn’t occur to us that a MAD cover showing a throng of runners racing through the canyons of downtown Manhattan, while an oblivious Alfred jumped over a dead body, could be interpreted as anything but a silly marathon gag,” a 2011 post from MAD’s Idiotical blog explained.

“Fortunately, the magazine’s printer at the time, Quad Graphics in Wisconsin, called and asked if we were absolutely sure that was the image we wanted on the cover of MAD given the recent events,” it continued. “We didn’t.”

Caldwell’s cover had already been printed and was waiting to be bound with the issue’s interior pages when the attacks went down. That left the editors just one day to come up with a new cover and get it to the printer in time to meet their schedule.

Assistant art director Nadina Simon was able to throw together the revised concept at the last minute, utilizing the cover from MAD #30, the first on which Alfred E. Neuman appeared as the magazine’s mascot. The zoomed-in version of the image that was used for #411 included an American flag design in place of the character’s trademark missing tooth.

When the issue eventually hit the stands, it still included a piece about the New York City Marathon, despite all references to the event being removed from the cover. But according to MAD contributor Tom Richmond, an unscrupulous employee noticed the alterations and attempted to cash in on the scrapped artwork at one point.

Richmond says he later discovered unbound prints of the Marathon cover on eBay that had evidently been stolen from the printer. They quickly took them down from the website, though it’s unclear what became of them afterward.