Mad #524 (John Ficarra) - Duck Dynasty Issue - December 2013

I have heard about the "reality show" Duck Dynasty.  I have never watched a minute of it.  Mark Frederickson (cover) and Tom Bunk ("A 'Duck Dynasty' Closing Prayer We'd Like to Hear") do a good job of illustrating the crudeness of the show and the DD players.  Hence, my aversion to it.  I liked seeing Snuffy Smith, Santa Claus, Chico Marx, Edwing's duck and a bubblegum-chewing frog in Bunk's double-splash-page extravaganza.  The better articles in this issue of Mad were "Man of Veal" (Devlin/Richmond), "Unadvertised Fast Food 'Secret Menu' Offerings" (Mailo/Loew), and the "Fundalini Movie Review" of Salinger (again by Devlin).

There is so much to find in Devlin's parody of Man of Steel.  Did we really need a remake of the ridiculous Superman origin story?  There are hundreds of the other comic book stories (Superman et al.) that could have been brought to the screen.  Desmond Devlin does a great job of identifying the inconsistencies in this flawed screenplay.  At the same time, artist Tom Richmond had a field day with this preposterous excuse for a movie.  He opens with an embellishment of the Krapton Council silly hats that now include a dinner table, a chandelier, a giant coffee pot and a carousel.  Sea monkeys appear in the underwater birthing scene.  It is great to see Senior Editors Joe Raiola and Charlie Kadau giving the bearded superguy one of his numerous job interviews on page 14.  Action Comics #1 makes its appearance on page 15, but my favorite Richmond drawing is the blue-and-white scene of a typical American family watching a tv transmission.  This television scene reminds me of the Kurtzman-Elder-Wood-Davis days.  All is well at the end as Lois Lame and Mayor Bloomberg help our clean-shaven hero dispatch the evildoer.

Writer Scott Maiko produced another great ad parody with his rejected (hopefully) fast food items.  My favorites are "Sausage McMuffin with Sponge", "Ghost Taco Supreme" and the "Jacksonville Lube Job."  Devlin's other offering (Salinger parody) was oddly included in the "Fundalini Pages".  This excellent movie review parody uses J.D. Salinger's own writing style to demonstrate that the guy was really a dysfunctional human being unworthy of big-screen biopic.  I was happy to see the seven-page ad for Inside Mad at the end of the issue instead of some of the usual fillers.  This is a wise move by the Mad editors since it shows that this is not just another collection of reprints.  I will be in line for a copy of this one.  [JAM 10/19/2013]

Departments:
Random Acts of Mindless - The Fundalini Pages
Dark Kent - Man of Veal
Eats Meets Jest - Unadvertised Fast Food "Secret Menu" Offerings
Don't Phrase Me, Bro - Zingers That History Forgot
Hairy God Mutter - A Duck Dynasty Prayer We'd Like to Hear
Joke And Dagger - Spy vs. Spy
In One Year And out the Other - The Mad 2014 Calendar: Dave Berg
Serge-In General - A Mad Look at Ethnic Foods
Beef Twerky - What If Miley Cyrus Worked in a Slaughterhouse? [Fake Department]
In Blog We Trust - Planet Tad!!!!!
Fail Order - Worst-Selling Holiday Catalog Items: 2013 Edition
Pen And Stink - The Mad Strip Club
Green Is Good - The Humda Seppuku
Like Funny in the Blank - Mad's All-Inclusive, Do-It-Yourself Obamacare Story
License to Shill - Exclusive Preview: Inside Mad
Our Daily Dread - The Best of the Idiotical

Fold-In - Fracking Result