"The Mad trips ended just after Gaines’ death in 1992, and some of the legends – Dave Berg, Antonio Prohias, Don Martin, George Woodbridge – have passed on. Age and distance have made it harder to connect. But Jaffee relaxes with Jack Davis and Sergio Aragones as if he’d seen them yesterday, sharing stories, signing books and observing the passing crowd, as cartoonists will. At this gathering in Savannah, Mad is the center of the world. But outside SCAD’s Poetter Hall, times have changed. The magazine’s circulation, which topped 2 million in the 1970s, was down to just below 200,000 as of 2010. The magazine, once printed on pulp, now uses better-quality paper, prints words it once shunned, and even takes advertising. It’s the kind of stuff that gives complainers material for potshots at the magazine even though – given Mad’s influence – you might say we’re living in a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad world. But the magazine remains a rite of passage, points out Viviano, a way for preteens and preteens at heart to negotiate the adult world. “It’s still a magazine for skeptics,” he says. “That hasn’t changed.”"