MAD About the 60's

When American kids of a certain vintage--Bill Clinton, for example, but not Bob Dole--put down their childish things, they picked up MAD magazine. It didn't leave their hands until adulthood hit, and maybe after. The magazine ain't what it used to be, so it's easy to forget how keen it once was. MAD About the Sixties is a long-overdue collection of material from that seminal humor magazine's salad days. It's a welcome reminder that when MAD was good, it was very, very good: it featured solid writing coupled with great art, month after month. The movie andtelevision parodies ("Bats-Man," "Star Blech") are sure to be a hit, whether you saw the originals the first time around or as reruns. While it helps to have lived throughthe era--particularly for the ad parodies--there's enough generic daffiness in MAD About the Sixties to satisfy the reader who never saw Wings, much less Paul McCartney's other band.