NatLamp

Back in the early 1970's, before it became a brand vehicle solely for Chevy Chase comebacks, National Lampoon was a legit satirical magazine, a Mad magazine for adults. Okay, maybe for adolescents who wanted to be adults. Certainly there were enough nude breasts and semi-pornographic stories to capture that only-just-post-pubescent male readership. That said, there was still a stretch of time in the early 1970's when the work was terrific.

I've stumbled upon a couple sites worth wasting your time, the gateway being this no-frills resource, National Lampoon Covers: 1970-1998. You can tell from a look through when the glory years end -- it's the year when almost every month's cover features a sexualized young woman.

Here's my faves:

May 1970 - Greed Issue: Flawless Peter Max parody cover, as "Peter Money"

August 1970 - Paranoia: First Gahan Wilson cover

March 1971 - Leonardo daVinci's Undiscovered Notebook: Mona Lisa gorilla (first cover to get famous, reprinted)

April 1971 - Adventure: First Frazetta

August 1971 - What, My Lai?: Probably their most political ever, scandalized Vietnam massacre figure Lieutenant William Calley crossed with Alfred E. Newman, by Kelly Freas

January 1972 - Is Nothing Sacred?: Goes the distance -- Che Guevara hit with a cream pie

March 1972 - Escape!: Hitler in hiding with an umbrella drink

October 1972 - Remember Those Fabulous Sixties?: Smoking Banana (also got reprinted)

January 1973 - If You Don't Buy This Magazine, We'll Kill This Dog: The high-water mark, #7 in the American Society of Magazine Editors (ASME, I'm not kidding that is their acronym) Top 40 Magazine Covers of the Last 40 Years list.

A second site, really well done, is (no relation, thanks for asking) Mark's Very Large National Lampoon Site. Among other wonderfully plunderable resources, he covers Staff & Contributors. We're talking a wealth of very smart, talented, twisted folks.

Key among them, in the lore of the Harvard Lampoon graduates who came in to start the magazine, is founding Executive Editor Henry Beard. He came into the job already famous for writing the dead-on Tolkien parody, Bored of the Rings.

There were a number of reasons why the magazine was so hot right from the start and why it couldn't maintain that quality forever. Beard always seemed the most mysterious but kind of the dean:

Beard was the calm center of the magazine, according to known sources, and was (still is) a master at parody. One of his favorite techniques was the reversed premise (for example: a "news" item about a vat of mercury tainted by tuna).

The man who seems to have taken ownership of the magazine editorially and cemented the tone was Editor-in-Chief Doug Kenney, and his section has this tasty info:

Beard, Kenney, and Hoffmann had a 5-year buyout clause in their contract with NatLamp's publisher, 21st Century Communications. The three exercised the option when the time came in 1974, to the tune of $7-million divided among them. Beard left as soon as the contract was settled; Hoffmann had left 1971 to finish graduate school. Kenney stayed on until 1977, when he wrote the screenplay for Animal House (with Chris Miller and Harold Ramis), the highest box-office comedy ever made.

Beard basically went offline until 1981 and in 1980 Kenney died in an ambiguous fall from a cliff in Hawaii. Freaky, right?

The other guy I adored as that post-pube hornyboy was Contributing Editor Chris Miller, he of the masterful hip sci-fi softcore satire, knowing just what notes to hit. And,

In 1974, Miller began a series of stories based on his fraternity days, beginning with "The Night of the Seven Fires." Later, these stories would form the core of National Lampoon's first and most successful movie, Animal House, which Miller co-wrote with Doug Kenney and Harold Ramis.

Needless to say, Animal House revolutionized movie comedy from the moment it was released in 1978. Saturday Night Live sprang from the National Lampoon Lemmings. I even saw Meatloaf about six years before Bat Out of Hell just unbelievably funny in the National Lampoon Radio Hour touring version when it stopped in Albany.

I guess the main mission of National Lampoon is somehow being handled today by Jon Stewart on The Daily Show. Horny Ed Helms doing a serious investigative piece in a tropical hottub surrounded by bikini girls and pretending he's getting interference on his cellphone.

Maybe it was a few months less immediate, but what those early issues of NatLamp had going for them was an even riskier transgressiveness. They were not only doing it for the first time, they were doing it in the heart of the Nixon years, when repression was back at a fever pitch. It was pre-media, or maybe early mass-media, only 3 or 4 channels on the TV. Less self-referential. Really bringing a side of the world into print for the first time. Super smart sixties kids who went to Harvard and came out bold, satiric, seasoned, young writers.

My interest terminated in 1979, but the magazine really started to slide in 1975, probably about the time the SNL stuff was hitting and the smart vets were looking for more lucrative writing jobs. Or maybe they had just hit the creative peak, with their 1964 High School Yearbook Parody.

Harvard Lampoon was famous for doing unannounced, prank-like, dead-on magazine and newspaper parodies, ones so good you might accidentally pick one up at the newsstand thinking it was the real Cosmopolitan or Wall Street Journal. The Yearbook has the same psycho-integrity about attention to detail. It was crossed with the Chris Miller college frat satires to make Animal House.

You're actually reading Larry Kroger's personal copy of the yearbook, replete with hilarious end-of-high school signatures from his 1964 classmates. Larry then became the main character of the feature, only now as a college freshman, advancing his story starting a few months after the yearbook.

As some reviewer called "Ethan and Sam's Dad" says on Amazon,

One of the funniest things in the English language.

If you've never read it, definitely worth picking up.