No, this is not about a magazine that is sick. It's about a magazine entitled SICK. While I do consider myself a little above average in the historical knowledge dept I never heard about this magazine until today. Apparently, it wold quite well because it ran from 1960 to 1980.

Sick was one of the three rip-off magazines that tried to siphon off of Mad Magazine's popularity. Let th truth be told: from the 1970's to the mid-1980's Mad Magazine published comic brilliance that has NEVER been equaled. In fact, the imitators didn't try. CRACKED was woefully lame in its comedy department but it was geared to the 7 - 8 year old who couldn't get the humor in Mad. And, I admit it, I LOVED those old CRACKED MONSTERS magazines of decades past. (The monster fad was on the last of its last legs in 1979 but remnants of it remained) Marvel launched CRAZY MAGAZINE in the 1970's and I didn't start reading it until 1982 which was its second to last year of publication. More on CRAZY in a future installment. But, here is Crazy in a nutshell: the magazine's final year was loaded with really sick humor that was not funny at all. It was an attempt at gross out sleaze that was a pure desperation attempt that left you more unnerved at the contents rather than inspired. The scheme didn't work and Crazy was canceled. Then again, it is hard to be a Mad rip-off when Mad's circulation was plummeting.

Then there is Sick, the magazine that lasted 20 years and apparently has NO fans. Seriously. I have never even heard of this one traded in comic circles!

I have to dig up some back issues and check it out....