"Maria Reidelbach: He was impossible and he was impossible in many ways. He ate impossible amounts of food. He was impossibly disheveled. His laughter was impossibly loud and long. At first, I thought it couldn't be genuine, but it was. And Mad, in the middle of the 1950s, when the competition was getting bigger, glossier and more colorful, it was ridiculous to launch a small black and white newsprint magazine that dared-no, it delighted in poking a finger at the American dream. It was suicide not to take advertising. It was impossible. Yet, forty years later, it's hard to name another magazine that's had the impact that Mad's had on American culture. Bill immensely valued Mad's artists and writers, yet he was stubborn about artist's rights; refusing to bend just a bit. He was just impossible. He cared an inordinate amount for an extraordinary number of us. About our health and our love lives, our joys and our sorrows. How could one man have such love in him? It was really impossible."