Boiling Mad

by MAD Magazine, Al Feldstein (Editor)

Paperback collection from the pages of Mad magazine.

Genres: Humor

192 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1966

About the author

Collective name for "the usual gang of idiots," the various creators, authors, and illustrators of MAD Magazine.

Many compilations of MAD Magazine parodies have been published, and individual author and illustrator credits are sometimes difficult to find.

Reviews

[Will]

The most influential book of my life.

[Rena Sherwood · Rating 4 out of 5]

Waaaaay back when I was a little kid in the 1970s, my brother had a small selection of Mad paperbacks, which were mostly published in 1974, although this one was published in 1966. However, the contents were all from bits already published in Mad magazine in the 1960s. This book, the one that I remember best, contained already published material from 1961 and 1962.

Most of Mad's humor went right over my head, since I was so young, but three sections made an immediate impact and somehow got lodged in my head for the rest of my life:

* The Lighter Side of the Dentist: which let me know right away what jokes never to say to a dentist. This information may have saved my life.
* A Mad look at Christmas: which let me know why some kids were afraid of Santa, why I should never bother with cards or wrapping presents, and to never play in large empty cardboard boxes whenever adults were looking.
* The Light Side of Entertaining: for some reason, even as a small kid, I understood the Lighter Side series. Not only was the artwork spectacular, the print easier to read than some other sections, but the jokes were evergreen. Yeah, fashions change and people don't smoke as much, but the gist of the jokes were the same. As soon as I saw the very first panel of this, the whole series came back to me.

Other segments in this book that really hit me now that I'm an adult include What Do You Do For a Living, Daddy? (Which puzzled the heck out of me when I was 5 or 6, but I didn't want to look dumb by asking what it meant), a poem about a real wife trying to compete with TV wives, and More Efficient Snow Removal, which was set in New York City, but I could easily picture it in nearby Philadelphia. Back in the 1970s, snow removal was a constant problem. Not anymore.

The only main problem of the book is that the humor is reliant on American pop culture of the early 1960s. A kid today would wonder at this other world, where women almost always wore dresses and were housewives, buzz cuts were common, men wore suits a lot, no Internet, hardly any rock music, and college seemed to be a lot more important.

However, if you really want to know the culture of the times (and that these good ol' days weren't all that good), then Mad paperbacks like this one are great places to start.

[TrumanCoyote · Rating 4 out of 5]

Contained several excellent items, which raised it above the level of these kinds of things.

[Pachyderm Bookworm · Rating 5 out of 5]

From the "usual gang of idiots" at Mad Magazine comes this cauldron of comedy representing all of America's "melting pot," guaranteed to leave even the most jaded reader in some sort of "hot water."

[Steven Peterson · Rating 3 out of 5]

From 1966 (3rd printing). . . . Another of those nutty publications by Mad magazine and a lot of fun. The first segment is "Mad's Handy Guide to Languages of the U.S.A." First example is interpereting rhe language of Madison Avenue. Examples. Someone says: "Just talking off the top of my head, I would say it looks pretty good." What the person meant? "I've been trying to think of the same thing all week." Or the language of television. What someone might say: "Our next guest is a different kind of comedian. . . " What that person actually meant: "He doesn't get any laughs."

Beyond that? The usual idiots, such as Don Martin. Or TV dinners. Here, a TV genre is matched with TV dinners (that may not even translate for younger readers here). Genre: private eye shows. TV dinner: hard boiled eggs, hot tomates, assorted capers. Well, I didn't say these items were hilarious!!

Anyhow, a nice example of Mad's humor. . . .