The fax came into the offices of Mad magazine around 10:30 one winter morning in 1981. As the newly hired associate editor, I was charged with periodically checking for incoming fax submissions from the magazine’s freelance contributors (“the usual gang of idiots”), who lived all over the world. I gave the fax a quick read and then walked it into the office of Mad’s founder and publisher, William M. Gaines.
Gaines’s office was much like the man himself: large and messy, but oddly efficient. There was a glass bookcase containing leather-bound collections of every issue of Mad, which first hit newsstands 70 years ago. Also, a human skull. On top of the bookcase were two grainy black-and-white photos, one of a man, the other of a woman. A visitor would assume (wrongly) that they were Gaines’s parents. In fact, they were photos of Fatty Arbuckle and Virginia Rappe, the silent actress Arbuckle was accused of killing.
