• by Steve Smith , Staff Writer @popeyesm, April 2, 2012

No joke, no prank. In fact, April 1st is Alfred E. Neuman’s birthday. And so on April Fool’s Day this weekend, DC Entertainment launched its enhanced and interactive digital edition of the 60-year-old humor magazine, MAD.

Available at $4.99 for the current issue and $1.99 for back issues in the iOS Newsstand for iPad, MAD reproduced each issue in downloadable form in an app shell that also accesses dynamically updated material from the MAD Web site. The current number and seven back issues currently are available in the app.

DC Entertainment says that it will include interactive elements in what is otherwise a facsimile edition. From what we could tell from the first issues, the enhancements are minimal. The cover of the issue assembles itself in a simple cut-out animation. The standard Al Jaffe Fold-in gag that ends each issue is animated to virtualize the folding of the page and reveal the joke. Each digital issue also includes a bonus fold-in from the MAD archives. We also noticed in the current issue an extra piece from the MAD Vault that reprinted a Paul Coker/Stan Hart riffing on the Constitution from June 1979.

An interactive “Make Your Own Twilight” film feature allows the user to highlight elements in their own Mad Lib construction of an inane plot. In some of the cartoon features, the interface lets you tap to enlarge some of the comic frames.

The most interesting piece of interactivity involves theMADMarginals. These little cartoons often printed in tiny scale at the margins of the magazine each can be tapped to pop up into their own enlarged window to appreciate cartoonist Sergio Argones’ great line work.

While MAD magazine has pulled back to publishing every other month, its brand continues to churn out Web originals and is getting another life in a successful Cartoon Network series. Videos from the series will be available and the new issue will arrive in the Newsstand on the day and date of its physical publication. Print subscribers get digital access as part of their subscription, and digital subs cost $9.99 a year.

MAD’s print dynasty has been in constant decline since its peak in 1974 with a circulation of over 2 million. Currently its figures hover in the mid-to-high 100,000s. Nevertheless, the brand has a new partner in Cartoon Network and continues to issue compilations of classic features.

Meanwhile in a painfully ironic twist, former print copycat brand Cracked has actually become a more formidable digital force than MAD. Cracked.com is now owned and operated by DemandMedia, which has helped push that brand’s portfolio of online video and clever pop culture riffs.