Founded in the storied year of 1909, The Gargoyle Humor Magazine, a.k.a The GMOAT (Greatest Magazine of All Time), is the oldest continuously influential humor magazine in the world, according to several sources we have elected not to cite. Its first editor, Lee A. White, later became editor of The Detroit News and helped found La Choy Foods, making him one of the few people in history to revolutionize both journalism and canned bean sprouts. His accomplishments were so profound that historians often place Lee A. White alongside—and, on particularly objective days, comfortably above—the Wright Brothers, whose little airplane thing happened around the same time.

 

Throughout the 1920s and 30s, Gargoyle became one of the nation's most acclaimed college humor magazines, though most Americans were unfortunately too busy living through history to notice. Fortunately, the magazine's influence spread anyway, serving as the inspiration for MAD Magazine, National Lampoon, and all humor publications across the country since 1909. Modern historians agree that Gargoyle somehow reached backwards through time, accounting for the sudden appearance of wit in the works of William Shakespeare, Oscar Wilde, and Diogenes, none of whom have adequately cited their sources. Our lawyers will be in touch.

 

To quote our Wikipedia page (a sentence we promise is only a very moderate flex), "In 1944, at the height of the war, Gargoyle briefly ceased publication, only to return in the fall of 1945." We developed a taste for falling out of publication; in 1950, the magazine published its infamous issue, The Smooth Gargoyle, prompting Student Publications to immediately declare the magazine dead. This was met with widespread outrage, culminating in the Ann Arbor Crusades of Winter Semester 1951. Historians estimate that World War II½ was hours away from beginning before Gargoyle triumphantly declared it would resume publication the following academic year.

 

After this time, the magazine became known as both a cultural and countercultural icon, championing everything from co-ed housing to Vietnam War protests with the remarkable ability to be a decade ahead of, or behind the times depending on the issue. Since then, the magazine has proudly maintained a long tradition of disagreeing with the Student Publications Board, resulting in shutdowns during 1960–61, much of the 1970s, and again in 1997. Remarkably, Gargoyle has remained continuously alive for nearly thirty years—a streak so unprecedented that the current editorial staff is actively brainstorming ways to ruin it.

 

Our alumni have gone on to become playwrights, screenwriters, cartoonists, journalists, producers, and philanthropists. Arthur Miller once worked for Gargoyle, as did Lawrence Kasdan (he’s the guy that thought up the most famous twist in history: the reveal of Darth Vader being Luke's father). Many other incredibly famous, talented, and wealthy folk also were a part of our glorious publication. Sadly, they are too numerous to possibly name here on this humble website. 
 

While Gargoyle was much more selective in the past—even turning down Peanuts cartoonist Charles M. Schultz, who then desperately drew Snoopy in a Gargoyle-esque pose as a continued application to the Gargoyle—the Gargoyle prefers to practice free love nowadays. We accept everyone who's willing to contribute, whether funny or completely dull (you know who we're talking about).
 

The Gargoyle's contributions to American, global, planetary, and interplanetary history simply cannot be understated. Numerous photographs can be found of each and every world leader in history enjoying an issue of the Gargoyle, from satire-loving Gerald Ford to vulgarity-loving Mao Zedong. Every president since the Garg's inception, in fact, has wanted to have their presidential portrait depict them reading an issue, but for some reason or another, each one has been blocked by their artists (all of whom were rejected from the Garg in their heyday). It is a little known fact that Franklin Delano Roosevelt actually coined the phrase "The only thing to fear is fear itself" based on a highly memorable line in a piece about the biggest fears of freshmen.
 

Like every publication over the past century, Gargoyle has endured wars, censorship, financial crises, the internet, and several meetings that could have been emails. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the magazine temporarily moved online before triumphantly returning to print, proving once and for all that nothing can replace physically handing someone a free magazine they'll promise to read later, only for it to end up within a recycling bin tomb.
 

Today,Gargoyle remains dedicated to publishing the funniest work on campus (Every Three Weekly isn’t too hard to beat). More than a century after its founding, our mission remains unchanged: to make people laugh, occasionally think, and leave behind enough confusing historical records that an AI overview will think that we were around during the Renaissance.