with his Playboy magazine. He admired Kurtzman's Mad, and met Kurtzman in New York to express his appreciation. He let Kurtzman know that if he ever left Mad, there would be a place for him in the Hefner empire. With this promise to back him, Kurtzman demanded legal control of Mad from Gaines in the form of stocks. Reluctant to lose the editor of his sole remaining publication, Gaines counter-offered with a 10% share. As this would not give Kurtzman the control he wanted, Kurtzman countered by asking for 51%. Stuart advised Gaines to replace Kurtzman with Feldstein, and Gaines's wife agreed. Gaines gave Kurtzman the news, and they went their separate ways. Gaines, who had given Kurtzman work in 1949 when the cartoonist was in need, felt that Kurtzman had betrayed him, and held the departure against him for years. Exacerbating the situation were the facts that Kurtzman had taken most of the Mad staff with him, leaving Mad with Feldstein, whose Panic had been a failure. It appeared Gaines would not last much longer in publishing; Joe Orlando overheard him say he would go back to teaching. Mad after Kurtzman Kurtzman left after issue #28, but much of the content that appeared in the twenty-ninth and thirtieth issues had been done under his supervision. Feldstein was still fresh on the job when Time reported that Hefner was to publish a "still unnamed magazine" and had "hired the whole staff of Mad, a short-lived satirical pulp." Kurtzman had lured away almost all the primary contributors except for Wally Wood, leaving Feldstein to build a new stable of contributors. Fans of the Kurtzman era felt that Kurtzman's post-Mad work was more biting and politically minded, while Feldstein's Mad was financially cautious and aimed at a somewhat younger audience. The strategy paid off: the magazine was a publishing and merchandising fixture by the 1960s and circulation peaked at 2.4 million in the 1970s. Devotees of Kurtzman's version found the magazine to have deteriorated after his departure. To others it lost its edge—it avoided satirizing targets such as segregation out of fears of hurting circulation. This reluctance was the target of a parody of the magazine in Esquire, prefaced with: "Just imagine what it would be like if you picked up your monthly copy of and found us dealing with subjects of genuine significance in America!" The restriction on mature themes drove