Issues about Issues

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Someone recently pointed out that I was missing one of the dated 2002-1 from the Swedish MAD pages.  That was true.  It seems that Swedish MAD issued two issues with a cover date 2002-1.  The Swedish issues almost always had a cover date, such as 2000 and a number between 1 and 12 depending on how many issues they published in that year.  But, they also usually had a issue number, starting with issue #1 with a cover date of 1960-1, then Issue # 2 with a cover date for 1960-2.  The system continued until issue # 351 with a cover date of 2002-2 . . .  mostly.

Starting with the issue my friend brought to my attention.   There are two different issues with a date for 2002-1.  One has a number of 349 and the other, 350.  I seem to remember that publisher of MAD in Sweden changed at that point.  Or, something about the publisher changed at that point.  So, the new publisher issues their first issue with the 2002-1 cover date (a duplicate of the previous issue) but the issue number was properly incremented to 350 (one more than the previous issue.)  Minor, but interesting slip up there.

Not the first one though,  The issue with the cover date 2001-3 was numbered 342, and so was the issue cover dated 2001-4, while the next issue (2001-5) picked up at 343.

The Swedish MADs issued from 1997-1 (again some publisher change, because there were no issues for 4 years before this) until 1998-3 had no issue numbers at all.  But, if they did they would have neatly lined up properly with issue numbers 310 through 314.  They resumed issue numbers with issue # 315 1997-4.

A really cool issue was issue 1976-2.5.  Very rare, I understand.  Issue # 135 was cover dated 1976-2.  Then they issued this thinner edition on very light paper that was cover dated 1976-2.5 but had an issue number of 136.  The next issue was cover dated 1976-3 and also numbered 136.

Another quirk was that for many years (1968, 1969, 1970, 1986, 1986, 1988 & 1989) the publisher published one issue for July and August combined.  Both months would be on the cover date and two appropriate issue numbers were assigned to the combined issue.

So, even though the final issue was numbered 351, leading you to believe that 351 actual individual issues had been printed in the series, I come up with a count of 347 unique editions within this series.

I have corrected the omission that brought this about.  Both 2002-1 issues are shown on the site.  All other Swedish issues are displayed also.

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