The Un-Illustrated "MAD"

© EC Publications

We have a wonderful 16-year-old sweetheart living with us. One of her few failings is her inability to hold or read a book, so all reading material must be read to her. We have enrolled her in our state's Talking Library program. We have been provided with a slow-speed 4-track cassette player and tapes. Often, we receive magazines on tape, usually once a month. For some reason, this month one of the magazines was MAD.

So I sat and thought, "How does a comic book like MAD translate to the spoken word?" Well, for starters, the really bizarre stuff is left out. This includes, oddly enough, most of the works of Sergio Aragones. His marginal cartoons and a fullsize feature were left out of the recorded version, as well as "Spy Vs. Spy".

Some of the rest of the stuff translates quite nicely to spoken word, such as Dick DeBartolo's satire of "Signs" and a narrative detailing what Martha Stewart might be writing into her datebook these days. Even Al Jaffee's Fold-In is described in its folded state and a Duck Edwing punchline is described in detail. However, some of the newer humor by MAD's cadre of young turk writers puts me off my feed, and there's a Frank Jacobs "All Purpose Do It Yourself..." deal (you fill in each of a number of blanks with items from a pre-defined list) that doesn't go over. Letters page consisted mostly of an identifier of roughly 100 artists and writers whose pictures appeared in a previous issue marking MAD's 50th anniversary.

She seemed to like it, laughing appropriately in spots, but fell asleep near the end. (I'm sure that MAD would love to hear about that one!)

Now, all I need to satisfy my curiosity on such matters: how do they do Playboy for books-on-tape?