Mad Magazine #6

I’m using Absolutely MAD Magazine - 50+ Years to read and comment on every issue of Mad Magazine published between 1952 and 2005. You can track the progress at this link.

Mad #6 starts off with a return to the Harvey Kurtzman cover after the Bill Elder cover from issue #5. Harvey once again proves his mastery of empty space and composition in this comical take on the King Kong movie crew. King Kong and his supporting cast are further lampooned later on in the book. The first page in this book is a gorgeous advertisement for Mad, illustrated by Jack Davis. It has your stereotypical Mad reader going from newsstand to newsstand only to find that no-one is stocking the book. It gives the reader some ideas as to how to ensure that the newsstand gets Mad, including “sending the attached subscription coupon which gets you 60¢ worth of comic books for 75¢.” It is funny watching Bill Gaines try to explain why the subscription costs more than a non-subscription by saying the comics will be mailed in “a strong manila envelope.” Bill said that the 75¢ was the honest-to-God price of the comic-plus-shipping but it seems pretty obvious, to me, this is just another example of Gaines’ notoriously tight wallet.

Anyway, on to the stories…

I’d be lying if I said I was crazy about the Wally Wood illustrated “Teddy and the Pirates.” Some of the visual gags were great and Wally Wood’s work is fantastic but the comic as a whole – I don’t know, I just didn’t get it. Of course, I never read Terry and the Pirates so that’s probably part of the problem.

The return of Melvin in the Jack Severin-illustrated “Melvin of the Apes!” was quite fantastic, however. In this story Melvin’s long-lost relatives take him out of the jungle and try to reintroduce him into high society. Chaos ensues, of course. Severin’s use of spot colors and powerful sound effects on certain action shots was an inspired decision that lead to some of the best comic panels I’ve ever seen.



The letters column has some more correspondences from angry parents. One really captures the tone of the times, saying, “How such a piece of filthy-minded pictures and so-called stories can be printed and sold on newsstands to young innocent children I can’t understand.” The other letters from “concerned parents” attack the book for its literary merit. The fact that the letters column is followed by an illustrated version of the poem “Casey at the Bat” says to me that this was Gaines thumbing his nose at the public. Again.

The Jack Davis-illustrated “Casey at the Bat!” was phenomenal. Casey being recast as a sometimes-sniveling, sometimes-overconfident buffoon was a great touch and the visual gags, from basketball chucking pitchers to fans armed with guns and knives were all well played.




The final story is the Will Elder-illustrated “Ping Pong!” a somewhat straight-forward parody of King Kong loaded with hundreds of ingenious visual gags. The story is really nonstop, gag-after-gag, and it sort of builds to the type of ending you can only really get from Mad Magazine – it wouldn’t make sense anywhere else.

Labels: mad_magazine, review

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