National Lampoon “Complete” DVD Redux

September 9, 2025

Back in 2007, Graphic Technology Inc. published “National Lampoon: The Humor Magazine Complete Collection on 1 DVD-ROM” I wrote about it at here the time. Over the years, it’s been an essential resource for me when I get questions from readers asking about articles and cartoons in the magazine. As I mentioned in 2007, it’s basically a bunch of PDFs and they are completely searchable. To make things easier and faster, I copied all of them to my computer. It’s much better than having to flip through actual issues (not to mention the wear and tear that would entail).

As I also mentioned in 2007, there are things missing, such as the special issues, but also certain things like insert cards which sometimes had editorial content, not just subscription promos. Over the years, I’ve noticed pages missing here and there. But I didn’t realize until recently just how many are missing.

For example, I received an email the other day asking about something that appeared in the June 1977 (“I got my job through the…”) issue. There are 104 pages in that issue, including the covers. But the item the reader asked about was completely missing. Flipping through the issue, I discovered the following pages were missing: 43–46, 61, 62, 79–82. And pages 3 and 4 were stuck between 98 and 99. Some of these included entire articles.

That’s ten missing pages in one issue. Incredible. I’m surprised I never noticed this before, but I guess I just assumed there were only a few pages missing and didn’t see it. It’s possible some of this stuff was intentionally left out for some reason, but it mostly seems random, as if the magazines they scanned were missing pages. Or it could have been simple sloppiness. I assume they had to unbind the issues to scan them and maybe some of the pages just got lost in the process.

I don’t know if this issue is unusual or if it’s a problem that affects the entire collection. And I don’t really have the time or inclination to go through every PDF, page by page, to find out.

The DVD-ROM is long out of print, but you can download it from The Internet Archive. Be forewarned: It’s only mostly complete.

Comments

Sad coincidence that you posted an update on the same day Ted Mann's death was announced. https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/ted-mann-dead-nypd-blue-deadwood-homeland-1236366859/

—Sean

September 9, 2025 8:14 pm

Thanks for letting me know.

—Mark

September 11, 2025 10:38 am

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