Doesn't give any credit to Mad Magazine for doing this stuff first

Mad was mainstream first.

The Harvard Lampoon was a college magazine. As the documentary pointed out, the Harvard Lampoon didn't reach a national audience. In the 1920s there were nationally published magazines that collected articles and cartoons from universities around the US- College Humor was probably the largest, and was published from 1920 to the 1940s. The college humor magazines were aimed at a young but mainstream audience. I agree with the original poster that it was Mad that brought radical and subversive humour that poked fun at authority figures to a country wide audience. Without Mad, there probably wouldn't have been a National Lampoon.

It surprised me that Drunk Stone Brilliant Dead didn't mention Mad once. It also surprised me that it made no mention of the Underground press and Underground comix of the 1960s. The art style of the first issues of the Lampoon looked very reminiscent of Crumb's style.

I didn't like National Lampoon very much in the 1970s. I read my older brother's issues. Even back then, I thought they were indulging in printing pictures of naked girls and making jokes about drugs and sex simply for the sake of it. They didn't have the force of the Underground comix, which were breaking ground in discussing subjects that before then couldn't be mentioned, and were using the archaic spirit of Mad to take apart the establishment and joint cultural heritage of the era. I remember their issue that printed a spoof of Mad, taunting that Mad was stuffy, middle aged, and forgot the meaning of satire. I thought that while Mad didn't print cartoons of naked women and guys smoking pot and snorting coke, it still featured strips that aptly commented on society: strips that linger in my memory decades later.

I thought while I was watching the documentary that National Lampoon branched out very quickly into radio shows, theatre shows, comedy records and movies. I think the magazine pulled its punches keeping an eye on their advertising revenue and growing empire. I'm not saying it wasn't funny- I thought the record albums and movies were funny- but I think the humour of the magazine was aimed at pleasing its creators and audience of liked minded readers,rather than exposing the darker aspects of its targets.