Behaving Madly (Ger Apeldoorn and Craig Yoe) - IDW Publishing - 2017 - 208 pages

Editors Apeldoorn and Yoe did a great job of compiling examples of the Mad magazine imitators from the late 1950s.  For a Mad fan like me, this book proves once and for all that I did not miss that much.  I dabbled in the market for the imitators in 1958 buying Cracked (#2 & #3), Frenzy (#1) and another of the 25-cent magazines that I cannot.  This was a lot me for me to spend when my weekly allowance was one dollar.  I quickly dropped those and stuck with Mad because it was obvious to me at the age of eleven that Mad was by far the best.  The most interesting part of this book is the work done by Mad veterans in the imitators - Jack Davis (Panic [not the EC comic] and Loco); Al Jaffee (Zany); and Will Elder (Panic and Loco).  Their art is very good as always but I do not see the MADness of their work with EC editors/writers Harvey Kurtzman and Al Feldstein.  The era of the imitators was interesting and this book show it competently.  However, we were all spoiled by the greatness of Mad.  Still are.  [JAM 8/29/2017]

Departments:
11 The First Wave
28 The Second Wave
43 ... And Beyond
45 Movie
67 Television
86 Comics
110 Book & Magazine
131 Monster
151 Big Name Artists
185 Advertising
193 Not Mad  [Index typo shows "185" for this page number]