Alfred E. Neuman - History

History

Since his debut in Mad, Neuman's likeness, distinguished by jug ears, a missing front tooth, and one eye lower than the other has graced the cover of all but a handful of the magazine's 500 issues. His face is rarely seen in profile; he has virtually always been shown in full frontal view, directly from behind, or in silhouette. Harvey Kurtzman first spotted the image on a postcard pinned to the office bulletin board of Ballantine Books editor Bernard Shir-Cliff. "It was a face that didn't have a care in the world, except mischief," recalled Kurtzman. Shir-Cliff was later a contributor to various magazines created by Kurtzman. In November 1954, Neuman made his Mad debut on the front cover of Ballantine's The Mad Reader, a paperback collection of reprints from the first two years of Mad. The character's first appearance in the comic book was on the cover of Mad 21 (March 1955), as a tiny image as part of a mock advertisement. A rubber mask bearing his likeness with "idiot" written underneath was offered for $1.29.

When Mad switched to a magazine format starting with issue #24, Neuman's face appeared in a central position on the illustrated border used on the covers, with his now-familiar signature phrase "What, me worry?" written underneath. Initially, the phrase was rendered "What? Me worry?" These borders would be used for five more issues, through Mad #30 (December 1956).

The character was also briefly known as "Mel Haney." In Mad #25, the face and name were shown together, on separate pages, as both Alfred E. Neuman and Mel Haney. The crowded cover shot on Mad #27 marked Neuman's first color appearance.

When Al Feldstein took over as Mad's editor in 1956, he seized upon the face:

"I decided that I wanted to have this visual logo as the image of Mad, the same way that corporations had the Jolly Green Giant and the dog barking at the gramophone for RCA. This kid was the perfect example of what I wanted. So I put an ad in the New York Times that said, "National magazine wants portrait artist for special project." In walked this little old guy in his sixties named Norman Mingo, and he said, “What national magazine is this?” I said “Mad,” and he said, “Goodbye.” I told him to wait, and I dragged out all these examples and postcards of this idiot kid, and I said, “I want a definitive portrait of this kid. I don't want him to look like an idiot—I want him to be loveable and have an intelligence behind his eyes. But I want him to have this devil-may-care attitude, someone who can maintain a sense of humor while the world is collapsing around him.” I adapted and used that portrait, and that was the beginning.”

Mingo's defining portrait was used on the cover of Mad #30 in late 1956 as a supposed write-in candidate for the Presidency, and fixed his identity and appearance into the version that has been used ever since. In November 2008, Mingo's original cover art featuring this first "official" portrait of Neuman sold at auction for $203,150. Mingo painted seven more Neuman covers through 1957, and later returned to become the magazine's signature cover artist throughout the 1960s and 1970s. Mingo produced 97 Mad covers in total, and also illustrated dozens of additional cover images for Mad's many reprint Specials and its line of paperbacks. Frank Kelly Freas rendered Neuman for Mad from 1958 to 1962. Current contributor Mark Frederickson has become the second-most prolific Mad cover artist, with 80 covers as of 2013.

Since that issue, and continuing to the present day, Neuman has appeared on the cover of nearly every issue of Mad and its spinoffs, in one form or another, with a small handful of exceptions. Two such departures were Mad #233 (September 1982) which replaced Neuman's image with that of Pac-Man and "Mad" #195 (December 1977) which instead included the message "Pssst! Keep This Issue Out of the Hands of Your Parents! (Make 'Em Buy Their Own Copy!). Even when Neuman is not part of the cover gag, or when the cover is entirely text-based, his disembodied head generally appears in miniature form. The most notorious Neuman-free cover was #166 (April 1974), which featured a human hand giving the profane "middle finger" gesture while declaring Mad to be "The Number One Ecch Magazine." Some newsstands that normally carried Mad chose not to display or sell this issue.

Though Neuman's ubiquity as a grinning cover boy grew as the magazine's circulation quadrupled, the single highest-selling issue of Mad depicted only his feet. The cover image of issue #161, spoofing the 1973 film The Poseidon Adventure, showed Neuman floating upside-down inside a life preserver. The original art for this cover was purchased at auction in 1992 for $2,200 by Annie Gaines, the widow of Mad founder and publisher William Gaines, and subsequently given on permanent loan to Mad writer Dick DeBartolo. The image was copied in 1998 for the issue spoofing the hit film Titanic.

A female version of Alfred named Moxie Cowznofski, occasionally described in editorial text as Alfred's "girlfriend," appeared briefly during the late 1950s. Alfred and Moxie were sometimes depicted side-by-side, defeating any speculation that Moxie was possibly Alfred in female guise. Her name was inspired by Moxie, a soft drink manufactured in Portland, Maine, which was sold nationwide in the 1950s and whose logo appeared as a running visual gag in many early issues of Mad.

In late 1959, Mad released a 45 rpm single entitled "What - Me Worry?" on ABC Paramount 12013 that was credited to Neuman, and featured an uncredited voice actor singing the song as Neuman. (The B-side of the single, "Potrzebie", is an instrumental.)

Mad routinely combines Neuman with another character or inanimate object for its cover images. Neuman has appeared in a slew of guises, including Santa Claus, Darth Vader, George Washington, King Kong, Baby New Year, Lawrence of Arabia, Batman, Robin, Spider-Man, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, Rosemary's Baby, George S. Patton, the Fiddler on the Roof, an Aurora-style model kit, Alex from A Clockwork Orange, Bonnie and Clyde actor Michael J. Pollard, Barbra Streisand, Mr. T, Indiana Jones, Radar O'Reilly, Bruce Springsteen, Max Headroom, Mr. Spock, Bart Simpson, Pee Wee Herman, Michael Jackson, a California Raisin, a face on Mount Rushmore, as Egyptian hieroglyphics, part of a fireworks display, a jack-in-the-box, an engraved bottle stopper, a scarecrow, the Headless Horseman, the sequins on Michael Jackson's glove, Don King, Robin Hood, Abraham Lincoln, Guns N' Roses' Slash, Kim Pine, the Man in the Moon, an Oscar statuette, an "Operation" board game, Jabba the Hutt, Wolverine, Gollum, Lance Armstrong, SpongeBob SquarePants, Agent Smith from The Matrix, Kurt Cobain, Shrek, Dr. Octopus, Dennis Rodman, The Incredibles' Jack-Jack, a zombie, a victim of a zombie swarm, a caveman, a fetus, a boa constrictor, a rat, a weathervane, a Ferengi, Greek column, the joker in a deck of cards, the bull's eye in a target, the three wise monkeys, part of a totem pole, a cigar label, George W. Bush, Justin Timberlake, Harry Potter, Lord Voldemort, Barry Bonds, Suri Cruise, Wilson the Volleyball, the Mona Lisa, Che Guevara, Lil Wayne, Barack Obama, Rorschach (from Watchmen), Adolf Hitler, Justin Bieber, Jimmy Carter, Finn the Human, and Uncle Sam ("Who Needs You?"), among other familiar faces.

Since his initial unsuccessful run in 1956, he has periodically been re-offered as a candidate for President with the slogan, "You could do worse... and always have!"

Along with his face, Mad also includes a short humorous quotation credited to Neuman with every issue's table of contents. (Example: "It takes one to know one... and vice versa!") Some of these quotations were collected in the 1997 book Mad: The Half-Wit and Wisdom of Alfred E. Neuman, which was illustrated by Sergio Aragonés.

Neuman is now used exclusively as a mascot and iconic symbol of the magazine, but before this status was codified, he was referenced in several early articles. In one, Neuman answered a letter from a suicidal reader by giving "expert advice" on the best technique for tying a hangman's knot. Other articles featured the school newspaper of "Neuman High School," and a bulletin from "Alfred E. Neuman University." An article entitled "Alfred E. Neuman's Family Tree" depicted historical versions of Neuman from various eras. Since then, Neuman has appeared only occasionally inside the magazine's articles. A recurring article titled "Poor Alfred's Almanac" showed his face atop the page, but otherwise the character had no role in the text. In a 1968 article, Alfred's face was assembled, feature by feature, from parts of photographs of well-known politicos, including then-President Lyndon B. Johnson (left ear), Richard Nixon (nose), Oregon Governor Mark Hatfield (eyes), and Ronald Reagan (hair). The gap in his teeth (which was otherwise the grin of Dwight D. Eisenhower) came from "The 'Credibility Gap' Created by Practically All Politicians."

Neuman's famous motto is the intellectually uncurious "What, me worry?" This was changed for one issue to "Yes, me worry!" after the Three Mile Island accident in 1979. On the cover of current printings of the paperback The Ides of Mad, as rendered by long-time cover artist Norman Mingo, Alfred is portrayed as a Roman bust with his catch phrase engraved on the base, translated into Latin-- Quid, Me Anxius Sum?

Alfred E. Neuman's surname is often misspelled as "Newman."

Alfred E. Neuman's most prominent physical feature is his gap-toothed grin, with a few notable exceptions. On the cover of issue #236 (January 1983), Neuman was featured with E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. The cover showed E.T. using his famous "healing finger" to touch Alfred E. Neuman's mouth and cause the missing tooth to appear. The cover of issue #411 (November 2001), the first to be produced following the 9/11 attacks in the United States, showed a close-up of Neuman's face, but his gap was now filled with an American flag. A text gag on the cover of issue #263 (June 1986) claimed that the UPC was really a "Close-up Photograph of Alfred E. Neuman's Missing Tooth."

Neuman also appeared as himself in a political cartoon, after Newsweek had been criticized for using computer graphics to retouch the teeth of Bobbi McCaughey. The cartoon was rendered in the form of a split-screen comparison, in which Alfred E. Neuman was featured on the cover of Mad with his usual gap-toothed grin, then also featured on the cover of Newsweek, but with a perfect smile.

Despite the primacy of Neuman's incomplete smile, his other facial features have occasionally attracted notice. Artist Andy Warhol said that seeing Neuman taught him to love people with big ears.

In 1958, Mad published letters from several readers noting the resemblance between Neuman and England's Prince Charles, then nine years old. Shortly thereafter, an angry letter under a Buckingham Palace letterhead arrived at the Mad offices: "Dear Sirs No it isn't a bit – not the least little bit like me. So jolly well stow it! See! Charles. P." The letter was authenticated as having been written on triple-cream laid royal stationery bearing an official copper-engraved crest. The postmark indicated it had been mailed from a post office within a short walking distance of Buckingham Palace. Unfortunately, the original disappeared years ago while on loan to another magazine and has never been recovered.

For many years, Mad sold prints of the "official portrait" of Alfred E. Neuman through a small house ad on the letters page of the magazine (claiming that these prints were also useful for wrapping fish). In the early years, the price was one for 25 cents; three for 50 cents; nine for a dollar; or 27 for two dollars.

A live-action version of Alfred E. Neuman—an uncredited actor wearing a mask—appears briefly in the 1980 film Up the Academy which was originally released to theaters as Mad Magazine Presents Up the Academy. Mad later pulled its support from the film, and all footage of the Neuman character was excised from North American home video and television releases, although it was reinstated for the 2006 DVD release.