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

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.

Starts off with a great Will Elder cover – what else can I say? Moves into a fantastic self-deprecating biography of EC Comics publisher Bill Gaines. It’s another great example of Gaines’ war against the censors and parental groups. In the bio, Gaines describes himself as the “twisted publisher of the perverted E.C. line.” It goes on to describe his younger years where he was a juvenile delinquent – his crimes culminating into a career “selling “cartoon books” (you know the kind!) on dark street corners outside burlesque houses.” It just keeps going on (I’ve posted the whole thing below) and ends with, “Don’t send fan-mail…he can’t read!”

Classic.



The first story is a horror spoof titled “Outer Sanctum” with artwork from Will Elder. Gorgeous artwork, jam-packed with gags, “Tomb It May Concern” etched onto the mausoleum being one of my favorites. The story is Swamp Thing which kind of confuses me because Swamp Thing didn’t appear until 14-years later. The only difference I can tell is that Swamp Thing was made from toxic waste interacting with the vegetation in a swamp and Heap (the monster from the Mad Story) was made from toxic waste interacting with trash in a swamp. It really seems like a perfect lampoon of Swamp Thing – what gives?

EDIT: Ok, I got it – the Mad story seems to be a parody of a character called The Heap developed in the 1940s. Learning something new!

The Wally Wood illustrated “Black and Blue Hawks” is an obvious spoof on the long-running comic featuring the multi-national ace-pilots the Blackhawks. The story was ok, I admit I’m not all that familiar with Blackhawk so a fair amount of the jokes are probably lost on me. I am a fan of supporting character Chop Chop Chop, an Asian pilot that gets screwed-over throughout the story. He comes to his demise for the good of the team, as illustrated below.



“Miltie of the Mounties” is damn-near perfect. Severin knocked it out of the park with the artwork and the story was a fantastic tale of the battle-ready Mounty that always gets his man…unless he turns out to be a woman. Great story, well-executed, and one of my favorite Mad tales so far.



Finally we have Jack Davis lending his pencils to “Kane Keen”, a nice little detective tale. The story was good enough – a private detective that’s always one-step ahead of his enemies and the cops. Desired by every woman he comes across but he always has his eye on the prize and his hand on a bottle of brandy. A nice little Scooby Doo ending wraps this tale up and brings the magazine to a close.

All-in-all a fun issue; the Gaines bio being my favorite part.

Labels: mad_magazine, review

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.

What a cover, what a cover.

What an issue. The “Superduperman” issue that spiked Mad’s popularity and brought the first lawsuit to their door. This issue has four incredibly strong stories but before we get to those I think the letters page deserves some special attention.

Bill Gaines, publisher of EC Comics, was fighting back against the experts and psychologists and media personalities that were linking comics with juvenile delinquency. He published a call for criticisms and defenses across his EC line, wanting to hear from actual parents who had praise or critiques of his books, promising to publish their letters. This issue published a letter from an angry parent and I just wanted to share it with you all:

Dear Editors,
You asked for it, and Brotherrrr! you are going to get it. Educational, entertaining, humorous? No. Your “brain-child” is none of these. In fact, it is plain rot. If my brains had so little to offer, I would blow them out if I could find them. We have four boys bringing in so-called “funny books,” and I usually glance over them to weed out those that are downright detrimental, and have found some disgusting books. But never one that seemed to have no purpose or excuse for going on than this one of yours. When will editors and publishers get over the idea that the public are morons and not capable of understanding good literature? I consider it an insult to children to put out such trash for the feeding of the mind. My neighbors agree with me on this, and I hope many parents will be as frank as I have been in answering your request for criticism. Television programs are bad enough, but one can turn them off and forget it. The ash-heap for MAD.

Mrs. C. Patterson
Oakland, CA

Just an interesting window into the times. At this point we’re still several years away from the establishment and enforcement of the Comics’ Code and the decimation of the industry that followed. Mad will turn to magazine format in order to escape censors. You have to wonder how many of comics' problems back then came from Gaines stoking the fires? I mean, good for him, but he seems to be a man ahead of his time. If he had some means to speak to a larger audience and not just his comic audience I’d imagine he’d get people to put up a good fight. With guys like Gaines, you can’t help but wonder what they would have accomplished if they had the internet at their disposal.

Anyway, the comic. It opens with the famous “Superduperman!” illustrated by Wally Wood. It’s a great take on a classic character, with Clark Bent being portrayed as a mousy creep and his alter-ego being portrayed as a cocky creep. Lois has no interest and his arch-enemy is Captain Marbles, a superhero-turned-villain that realized he’d have a better life if he started robbing people instead of helping them. The story’s fantastic; it’s jam-packed with visual gags and graced with one of my favorite lines in the mag so far, “One day while I was punching my way through a mountain…” If only every conversation could start like that.

My favorite story of the issue goes to the Davis illustrated “Flob Was A Slob!”, an inspired spoof of the old romance comics. It’s the “true confession” of a young woman who had to choose between her lifelong sweetheart, Flob, and the handsome Rackstraw Him. She chooses Rackstraw, of course, and he ends up being the wrong choice, of course. But unlike the romance comics, where the wrong choice ends up being a sissy or a womanizer, Rackstraw is a drug-dealing, gambling, bank-robbing loser. Plenty of great visuals and a nice departure from the clichéd ending to wrap it all up. I thought this story was something magnificent.

Two short stories in this issue: “The Parole” and the faux-advise column “Let’s Deplore Your Mind.” They were ok.

The Severin-illustrated “Robin Hood!” is next. I really liked this version’s take on the Robin Hood/Sparkie (Big John sends his sidekick out in this tale) cudgel fight over the water. Robin Hood can’t even balance on the beam and he falls right in. The final pay-off is clever, as well, with Robin Hood and his bank of Merry Men being nothing more than your everyday thug, stealing from everyone to give to themselves.

Finally there’s Will Elder’s take on The Shadow in a story aptly titled “Shadow!” I honestly don’t know anything about The Shadow so I can’t comment on the story as satire but I will say that the jokes were pretty fantastic. There’s a great gag that has the invisible Shadow eating a slowly disappearing watermelon and spitting out the seeds. For some reason it reminds me of the Kramer’s Lollipop gag from the backwards episode of Seinfeld. All this actions going on and there’s just this floating watermelon being slowly consumed.

I loved this issue – all four stories were tight and the letter from the concerned mother in the front was the icing on the cake.

Labels: mad_magazine, review

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 #3 opens with a tremendous cover by Harvey Kurtzman. I love the composition, the character’s isolation, the darkness closing in, the sea of tombstones, the way the umbrella bleeds into the suit and the handle’s a substitute for a handlebar mustache, and I’d buy a stuffed animal that looked like the little vampire boy any day of the week. The issue also features the first appearance of Mad’s letter column, “Mad Mumblings.” Lot’s of praise heaped on issue #1 (“simply delirious”) and a couple of negative comments (“a new low in the comic book industry”).

Kurtzman and Elder’s (credited as “Sergeant Elder”) opening story “Dragged Net!” was my favorite of the issue. Every panel is absolutely packed with visual gags – you get something new every time you read the story. The play between Detective Sergeant Joe Friday and his assistant Ed Saturday is magnificently crafted and, along with the comical twists and turns of the story, is a perfect play on the police dramas of the time. Also, supreme bonus points for referencing Nanook of the North, the 1922 film widely considered the first feature-length documentary.

Next up was the Severin-illustrated “Sheik of Araby!” A hilarious comic that takes on the French Foreign Legion. The sergeant abuses his regiment of foreigners and outlaws that are nowhere near the level of toughness he commands. He throws them over walls, breaks their backs, and breaks rifles over their heads, all the way shouting obscenities at them with his thick French accent. The payoff in the end was a bit of a surprise and well executed.

We go into the two short stories. Honestly, I’m not really enjoying these as much anymore. The Gladiator/Baseball story was pretty funny but I didn’t enjoy the Dandelion Caper all that much. It’s hard – the artwork and humor in the illustrated stories are just too good, if I have to pause to read prose it needs to really grab me. I see myself skipping some of these in the future…

…because skipping them means getting to stories like the Wally Wood illustrated “V-Vampires!” This is a great little tale that takes on the old “she’s obviously a monster, stupid” genre of horror stories. Of course, the twist is that he’s a monster as well. Well played.

And then there’s the Jack Davis-illustrated “Lone Stranger!” A great parody of the “Lone Ranger” that has the Stranger as the bumbling, attention-starved idiot and his sidekick, Pronto, as the guy that needs to take care of business. The gag at the end is hysterical, with the Lone Stranger waiting for the perfect moment to jump on his horse (Golden) and ride off into the sunset. Of course, the Lone Stranger never manages to make the jump onto his horse, causing him to suffer through a sore rump through the majority of the story.

Interestingly, “Dragged Net!” and “Lone Stranger!” seem to be turning towards spoofs of the genre TV shows and not the genre comics that the first two issues relied heavily on. We’re already starting to move towards the conventions of today’s Mad Magazine.

Labels: mad_magazine, review

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 #2 – you have GOT to love that cover. I laughed out loud when it first popped up on my screen, the idea of the prototypical horror comic narrator going to a baseball game and inadvertently jinxing the players is comedy gold. The opening story (illustrated by Jack Davis although he’s credited as “Melvin Davis”) is the horror/baseball hybrid alluded to on the cover, appropriately titled “Hex!” I guess I should say something about “Melvin” since it seems to be a running gag in early Mad mags. All four stories in Mad #1 (as well as the cover) featured a protagonist or antagonist called Melvin. In issue 2, all of the artists are credited under an assumed name “Melvin” except for John Severin who, for some reason, is not credited at all. In two of the four stories featured in issue 2 the protagonist is named Melvin but the name doesn’t seem to appear in the other two stories. I really don’t have a point, listing all of the times a Melvin appears in Mad, but I doubt Harvey Kurtzman had a point using “Melvin” all of the time, either. It’s just Mad setting the standard for a touch of irrelevance in all of their satire and I dig it.

Anyway, back to “Hex!” The story itself has a bit more to it than the cover suggests; our hero makes a deal to marry the woman with the evil eye in exchange for a pennant. Ironically, the team our hero plays for is obviously modeled after the Red Sox, a team that knew a thing-or-two about hexes. I couldn’t help but laugh as the fabled Curse of the Bambino made way for the Curse of the Woman with the Evil Eye. I’m not sure how far back talk of The Curse went but I know it wasn’t a pop-culture phenomenon until the late-80s/early-90s. Unintentional historical relevance aside, “Hex!” was a funny tale with some fantastic visual gags, especially the supernatural forces acting on the baseball once the pact was sealed.

The second tale was “Melvin!” with art from the uncredited John Severin. “Melvin!” is a Tarzan spoof with a FANTASTIC gag that has Tarzan calling his jungle buddies for help that’s followed by a stampede of dogs, pigs, dinosaurs, dodo birds, whales, and other members of the animal kingdom.

There are two short stories in this issue, just like the first one. The first one is pulp detective homage and the second is a rather funny sci-fi piece about a boy who transmits radio waves from his teeth.

Kurtzman and Wally Wood’s (credited as Melvin Wood) sci-fi spoof “Gookum!” was up next. I didn’t like it as much as the sci-fi story from issue one but it’s still a humorous story about jello waking up every five-hundred years and taking over the world. Plus, you know, it’s Wally Wood.

Will Elder (credited as Melvin Elder) brings the best story of the issue, the crime-spoof “Mole!” The story of man that can use anything to dig his way out of prison but he gets caught by the police the moment he pops out of the ground. Great gags, I especially love the way Melvin Mole only says “Dig” and various textbook crime lines like “John Law” and “Coppers won’t put me in jail!”

Labels: mad_magazine, review

I recently purchased Absolutely MAD Magazine - 50+ Years, a DVD that contains every issue of Mad Magazine published between 1952 and 2005. That’s over 400 issues. I’m looking forward to reading all of them over the next couple of years and I plan on offering some commentary on each one. I thought it’d be interesting to see how the magazine changed over 50+ years and also use it as a window into the popular culture and trends of the times.

The first issue of Mad doesn’t look or feel like the Mad my generation is familiar with. It was comic-sized, it didn’t feature Alfred E. Newman anywhere in the book, and its brand of satire focused almost entirely on genre comic books. The book was the brainchild of Harvey Kurtzman, legendary cartoonist and editor. Harvey was pulling triple-duty at the time, editing EC Comic’s Frontline Combat and Two-Fisted Tales in addition to Mad. Despite his heavy workload, Mad #1 was an achievement in satire and storytelling, undoubtedly helped along by the talented illustrators and humorists Harvey managed to wrangle together to pitch in some pages.

The first story was a spoof on horror comics called “Hoohah!” It’s a fitting way to start the mag, considering EC Comics popularized horror comics in the 50s. It lays the gauntlet down and lets the reader know that nothing’s sacred in the eyes of the Mad Men, including EC’s own cash cow. “Hoohah!” was illustrated by Jack Davis and lampooned most of the horror comic conventions – the haunted house (and the protagonists’ increasingly illogical decisions to explore it), the creepy butler, the contrived back-story, the “gotcha” ending. All-in-all it was a fairly straight-forward parody, the best gag being Galusha, the male protagonist, constantly trying to sneak away from the house only to be wrangled back by the headstrong and horror story telling girlfriend, Daphne.

Wally Wood’s sci-fi spoof “Blobs!” was a take-off on the old morality tale. We’re in the distant future, where society’s dependence on machines has made everyone fat and lazy. Kurtzman and Wood were indeed futurists; I just don’t think they realized the future they predicted was coming down the pipe a lot sooner than 1,000,000AD. One of the more interesting aspects of the piece was how the machines were making men’s jobs easier and women’s housework easier. It’s a product of the times, of course, but I guess even futurists get some things wrong. Also, according to the cartoon, men of the future will rely on “disposable prefabricated robot women” for their sexual pleasure. Sales of the Real Doll compared to Viagra and porn downloads seem to be disproving that theory, as well, but time will tell.

The Mag then has two short stories, really smart, trippy stuff. One’s a sci-fi story about a boy that contemplates the infinite by studying a salt advertisement only to be sucked into the advert and the other tells the history of erasers via a Korean War parable transplanted into Roman times. Yeah, I know.

And then there’s Will Elder’s crime spoof, “Ganefs!” My favorite story of the issue, the visual gags were masterful and the nuances of the elaborate extortion-plot and escape plan perfectly lampooned all aspects of crime and action movies that we still see today. I laughed harder and harder as the characters run away from the coppers by car and then boat and then underwater, using their gun barrels as snorkels. An obvious but well-executed twist ending caps off the story perfectly and strengthens my undying love and appreciation for everything Will Elder has ever done.

The final story’s a western called “Varmint!” with art from John Severin. Plenty of great visual gags accompany a funny satire of the hard-as-nails, never-back-down cowboy looking for his man and killing anyone who gets in his way. I’m a fan of the slow pace and the heavy exposition that continuously streams from the characters' mouths. The story itself, about a cowboy that doesn’t realize that he’s the man he’s looking for, reminds me quite a bit of Atlas/Marvel Comic’s Outlaw Kid. Outlaw Kid started to run two years after this issue of Mad was published (but the whole “Outlaw Kid was looking for himself” angle wasn’t introduced until 2000), so Mad’s version of the story certainly came first. It makes me wonder if it was an often-used cowboy storyline from way-back-when or there was a little bit of influence taken from the Mad concept. As an interesting side note, John Severin actually supplied some covers for the 1970s relaunch of Outlaw Kid.

The rest of the mag consists of house ads, an ad for German-crafted binoculars (seven-years after WWII and we liked the krauts again, apparently), an ad for a mystery product that will turn you into a muscular girl-magnet, and an ad for an auto repair manual. Ads like these will be mercilessly skewered in future issues of Mad.

So that’s issue one. I don’t expect to be anywhere near this detailed for all 450+ issues but I at least wanted to start it off on the right foot.

Labels: mad_magazine, review

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