Paperback #37
 1974
 "The Invisible MAD" gets off to a strong start with the "No Longer Working for Peanuts Dept." and the magazine's answer to the big question, "Will Success Spoil Charlie Brown?" Drawn by Jack Rickard and written by Larry Siegel this is a nice look at what happened when Charles M. Schulz's "Peanuts" became big business in the 1960s (the collection was originally published in 1967). The idea is that Shermy comes back to visit the old gang and discovers Schroeder has a rock band, Pigpen is using imported dust, and Charlie Brown is playing polo. This a classic example of "MAD" satire and while there might not be anything else as good here, it is still an enjoyable walk down memory lane for a comic look at the 1960s.
 That is why we get a look at "The MAD Library of Extremely Thin Books" (e.g., "Germans Who Admit they Backed the Nazis"), "Advantages of the Suburbs for Kids," and "MAD's Medical Mother Goose" written by Siegel and illustrated by Al Jaffee. You also get a chance to join in on the fun in "MAD's Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions" where they provide several examples to stupid questions (e.g., a dentist asking "Did that hurt?") and then provide you space to come up with your own riposte. Who knows, you could do better than Jaffee.
 What you really want to know is what parodies you get to see in "The Invisible MAD." Artist Mort Drucker and writer Dick De Bartolo do "Mission: Ridiculous" for the television one and ending the book is Drucker joining with Stan Hart to do "In the Out Exit" for the movie one (and I bet most of your have no idea the movie being parodied is "Up the Down Staircase," which starred Sandy Dennis and is one of those movies that teachers still watch periodically to remember why they bother to teach). There are other familiar faces here, such as Spy vs. Spy, a quartet of Don Martin offerings, and Dave Berg's look at the "Lighter Side" of friendship and fear. The result is a solid offering of the warped humor from the usual gang of idiots that some of us grew up on way back when.