MAD Blasts

By MAD Magazine, edited by Albert B. Feldstein

Excerpts from MAD Magazine, copyright 1980, 1981 & 1988.

Included are:
The Shiner by Larry Siegel, art by Angelo Torres
The Lighter Side of . . . by Dave Berg
Spy vs Spy
MAD's Career-Oriented Mother Goose by Frank Jacobs, art by Paul Coker Jr.
Don Martin cartoons
The MAD Sale of Expendable American Properties, Landmarks and Monuments by Dennis Snee, art by Sergio Aragones
Why Didn't You Do Your Homework? A Collection of 18 MAD Excuses by John Ficarra, art by Paul Coker
What the Television Says and What it Really Means by Tom Koch, art by Jack Davis
Real Life Madness by Lou Silverstone, art by Harry North
More Wait Till You Get Home and Find That . . . by Paul Peter Porges
and much more!

Hopping MAD

By MAD Magazine, edited by Albert B. Feldstein

Excerpts from MAD Magazine, copyright 1964 & 1968.

Included are:
Insecurity Is a Pair of Loose Swim Trunks by Frank Jacobs, art by Bob Clarke
The Evolution of a Popular Song by Tom Koch, art by George Woodbridge
The Lighter Side of  Married Men by Dave Berg
Don Martin cartoons
A MAD Look at the Circus by Sergio Aragones
The Great Filter Tip Cigarette War by Al Jaffee, art by Bob Clarke
MAD Visits the Producer-Director of "Charades" by Larry Siegel, art by Mort Drucker
The Long Range Effects of Products on People by Don Reilly, art by Jack Rickard
And more!

MAD Pet Book

By Paul Coker Jr.

A collection of cartoons written and drawn by Paul Coker Jr.

The chapter titles read like a serious book about pet care. But it is totally not that.
The chapters include:
Choosing Your Pet
Housing Your Pet
Your Pets Diet
Training Your Pet
The Health of Your Pet
Some Final Obfuscations

It's an amusing collection, but for me, the best part was the illustrations.

MAD About Town

By MAD Magazine, edited by Albert B. Feldstein

Excerpts from MAD Magazine, copyright 1976, 1977 & 1983.

Included are
Gall of the President's Men by Larry Siegel, art by Mort Drucker
Don Martin cartoons
The Lighter Side of . . . Noise by Dave Berg
Spy vs Spy
The MAD Guide to  Parental Hang-ups by Tom Koch, art by Paul Coker Jr.
MAD's Academy Awards for Jocks by Lou Silverstone, art by Jack Davis
A MAD Look at Winter by Sergio Aragones
MAD's Death Announcements by Frank Jacobs
When You're Poor . . . and . . . When You're Rich by Frank Jacobs, art by Jack Davis
And much more!

MAD's Don Martin Carries On

By Don Martin, Dick DeBartolo and Frank Jacobs

A collection of cartoons by Don Martin, including
One Wednesday Morning at the Hospital
One Afternoon in the Garden
One Sunny Day in Key West
Captain Klutz Meets the Man of 1,000 Faces (Give or Take 900) written by Dick DeBartolo
One Morning in the Operating Room
The Ballad of Arthur Freen written by Frank Jacobs
One Monday Afternoon at Joe's Concrete Works
Cockroaches
The Scientist in his Laboratory
Star Spangled Bananas written by Dick DeBartolo
And more!

Steaming MAD

By MAD Magazine, edited by Albert B. Feldstein

Excerpts from MAD Magazine, copyright 1968, 1969, 1975.
Included are:
If Comic Characters Were Psychoanalyzed by Frank Jacobs, art by Bob Clarke
Cartoons by Don Martin
The MAD Ice Hockey Primer by Larry Siegel, art by Jack Davis
The Lighter Side by Dave Berg
Spy vs Spy
Christmas Is . . . by Gilbert Barnhill, art by Al Jaffee
A MAD Look at . . . Sex Education in the Schools by Jack Kent
Casey at the Dice by Frank Jacobs, art by Jack Davis
MAD's Follow-Up Report on Progress by Dick De Bartolo, art by Bob Clarke
A MAD Look at Movie Monsters by Sergio Aragones
And much more.

Mad for Kicks

Edited by Albert B. Feldstein

Excerpts from Mad Magazine,  dating from 1973, 1974, and 1980.

Satire, cartoons & humorous pieces featuring Mad's most well-known artists and writers like Dave Berg, Don Martin, Mort Drucker, Bob Clarke, Jack Davis, Stan Hart, Dick De Bartolo and Larry Siegel.
Included are satires of the James Bond movies, Dave Berg's The Lighter Side, a Mad Tennis Primer, Spy Vs Spy, and a satire of the 1970s TV show McCloud  titled McClod.

This was my era and looking back at those days is quite a hoot. A lot of Mad's best known artists have passed on so enjoying their humor and art is pleasant and sad at the same time.

Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Mad

Edited by Albert B. Feldstein

Excerpts from Mad Magazine, dating from 1968 and 1975. Cartoons, satire and humorous nonsense, still funny and enjoyable forty some years later.

Included are:
Mad's "Cliche Conversation" Killers by Stan Hart, art by George Woodbridge
Several Don Martin cartoons
More Specialized Self-Defense Books by Dick De Bartolo, art by Joe Orlando
Balmy and Clod by Larry Siegel, art by Mort Drucker
You Know You're Really a Parent When... by Phil Hahn & Jack Hanrahan, art by Paul Coker, Jr.
Alley-Oops! by Sergio Aragones
A Nostalgic Look at Sandlot Baseball by Dean Norman, art by Paul Coker, Jr.
The Lighter Side by Dave Berg
And much more!

These humorous pieces may be old, but they are still funny and well worth reading.

The Brothers Mad

Edited by William M. Gaines

A collection of excerpts from Mad Magazine, dating from 1953, 1954 and 1955.

These comics and satires date from 65 years ago. Of course the movies and TV shows lampooned are no longer familiar to most readers today. But the book is still funny and enjoyable even if you don't get a lot of the references.

Included are:

• Black and Blue Hawks
• The Dave Garrowunway Show
• How to Get into the Army
• Shermlock Shomes: The Hound of the Basketballs
• Fozless Fooznick
• Shadow
• Alice in Wonderland
• Woman Wonder
• Melvin of the Apes
• Little Orphan Melvin

And loads more!

Greetings From Sherman's Lagoon

By Jim Toomey

A collection of cartoons from the comic strip Sherman's Lagoon, dating from 1992 to 1993.

Sherman is a great white shark and has a taste for people. He frequently comes up with plans to eat humans but often fails. He is occasionally successful though, appearing with human legs sticking out of his mouth.
He has a steady girl friend shark, Megan. You can tell she is a female because she wears a string of pearls around her "neck". He also has a best friend, a sea turtle named Fillmore. Being friends with a shark can be a bit tricky, as Fillmore sometimes finds himself on the menu, although when he protests, Sherman always backs off.

I enjoyed this book of comic strips. It is always funny, if a bit grim at times.

Summerlings

By Lisa Howorth

Washington DC, summer 1959. The city is experiencing a strange infestation of spiders. Spiders and their webs are everywhere, much to the delight of the neighborhood kids and the displeasure of the adults.
Three boys are getting the utmost enjoyment from the infestation, setting out to capture and catalog as many different kinds of spiders as they can find. John, Max and Ivan live in a very diverse neighborhood. On their street are Ukrainians (Ivan's family), Brazilians, Austrians (Max's family), Southerners from Louisiana, Netherlanders, Hungarians and native Washingtonians (John's family).
John is the main character and his family life is a bit of a puzzle for him. His parents are in the middle of a divorce, he hasn't been told why. He only sees his father rarely, mainly for a week at the seashore during summer. His mom is in the hospital, ostensibly for illness, but there is some doubt about the truth of that. Meanwhile, John lives with his grandparents, Brickie, his grandfather and Dimma, his grandmother.
John tries to understand the undercurrents in the lives of the adults but rarely comes to the correct conclusion. Meanwhile the boys have big plans: capturing spiders, sneaking into the Pond Lady's backyard to capture the albino frog Peachy and sneaking a peek at Pond Lady's iron lung, figuring out how to get back into the good graces of the DeHaans, who have the only swimming pool on the street and organizing a block party. But the biggest plan of all is breaking into the museum to steal a pirate vinegaroon. They plan to use this poisonous scorpion relative to get their revenge on a neighborhood bully they call the Scutcheon.

This may sound like a kids book but it isn't. Mixed in with the boys' adventures are the threats and phobias of the time, Commies, Russian spies, and the atomic bomb. One of the secondary characters dies and the cause of death is murky at best. The boys pretty much run wild, and the adults in the their lives rarely supervise their activities.
I really enjoyed this story. It isn't a long book, only 243 pages, but it totally captured my interest.

Review by Kirkus Reviews.

The Churchgoer

By Patrick Coleman

Mark Haines used to be a Christian pastor. But then life kicked him in the ass, as it is apt to do, and he lost his faith. Now he is working as a night watchman and trying to stay clean and sober. Unfortunately his carefully constructed new life falls to pieces when a fellow night watchman is murdered and Mark loses his job.
Meanwhile, Mark has befriended a young, vagrant woman, Cindy Liu. He invites her to stay at his place but comes home to find she has vanished. He then pursues a quest to track her down, unable to accept that she has moved on.
He ferrets out she might be staying at the home of a drug dealer who used to attend Mark's former church. He finds her there and she seems to be under the influence. But the drug dealer quickly sends Mark packing and shortly after Mark leaves the man's house, the police raid it and sweep up Mark in the raid too. But in those few minutes between the time Mark caught a glimpse of Cindy and when the police arrive, Cindy has vanished once again.
Mark, still obsessed with the girl, tracks down her former church and talks to the pastor. He soon discovers that events that transpired at the church were the trigger that sent Cindy on her downward spiral into drugs, prostitution and homelessness.

This was an OK read. The main character, Mark, seemed to me to be a very unpleasant and out-of-control person. He strange attachment to Cindy is tied into his guilt over the death of his sister and his estrangement from his daughter. Cindy certainly doesn't give him any encouragement and pretty much refuses to be rescued. But he still won't let it go, even to beating up a man at one point.
He is a weird person and as a character, not very sympathetic.

Review by Publishers Weekly.

The Lost History of Dreams

By Kris Waldherr

A poet dies, author of a popular book of poems, The Lost History of Dreams. He wanted to be buried beside his dead wife in the glass chapel he built for her. But his heir and current resident of the property is unwilling. She has issues with the dead man.
So a relative is sent off, with the dead man's corpse, to try to talk the woman into changing her mind and fulfilling the poet's wishes. However, the relative has a lot of mental baggage of his own to deal with, all centering on the tragic death of his bride a few years earlier.

This book was pretty good. It lagged a bit in the middle as it went through the history of the poet and his wife, as retold by the recalcitrant woman who is the heir. This woman's identity is becomes one of the mysteries of the story. Is she who she claims? Is she, perhaps, the dead poet's wife? Or is she just an opportunist and an impostor, as her enemies claim? The other mysteries are the story of the poet's wife and her death and the truth about the death of the relative's bride.
I thought the latter part of the book was a bit silly and not in a good, amusing way. Too many identity switches.

Review by Kirkus Reviews.