Mad About Comic Strips

    (E.C., 2003)
™ and © William M. Gaines, Agent

There’s a lot of stuff to be Mad about. One can be Mad about TV, the movies, super-heroes, and various decades. Now, one can be Mad about comic strips, as well.

Mad parodies of comic strips are different from other parodies. A satirical look at a feature film or a popular program cannot actually replicate the experience. A parody of a three- or four-panel comic strip can reproduce the feel of its source material in its entirety.

Lots of strips from the past six decades are dissected, from Mandrake to Miss Peach and from Family Circus to The Far Side. Peanuts seems to be a particular favorite, but fans of Blondie, Hagar, and Cathy won’t go away empty-handed.

Certain pieces, such as “Comic Strip Cursing Symbols to Match a Given Situation” and “If Famous Authors Wrote the Comics” may be familiar to long-time readers, but other pieces have not been reprinted (or at least not as often). Foremost among these is a pull-out replica of a Sunday comics page, last seen in 1961. The only problem is that one actually has to pull it out of the book, an act that is anathema to comics fans.

— Jack Abramowitz
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