The first 24 issues of MAD Comics — it became MAD Magazine with #25 — have to be the most-reprinted comic books in history. I must have at least ten copies of the best stories and six or seven of the worst. That's not even counting the fact that I own them all in their original printings…a revelation that probably causes you to wonder why then, I buy all the reprints. It's because I am a monumental chowderhead, that's why. (Didn't think I had a good reason, did you?) Anyway, the first time any of that material was reissued was in a series of Ballantine paperbacks that came out in the fifties. They were black-and-white and the pages were chopped up and printed sideways, one third of a comic book page to each paperback page.
It was a helluva thing to do to such wonderful material but, somehow, it didn't matter to those of us who discovered the golden wit of the seminal MAD in this venue.
It threw me at first. I'd started reading MAD with #70, by which time it had evolved far from the comic book issues edited and written by Harvey Kurtzman. I picked up the first paperbacks, which were then in print, expecting the kind of stuff being done in the current magazine — Spy Vs. Spy, Don Martin, movie parodies, etc. When I didn't get it, I felt swindled…but when you're that age, you tend to think, "I paid for it, I'm going to read it." So I read it, "it" being the very first one issued, The Mad Reader. And I loved it.
As noted, I have all those stories in many color editions, with the pages intact and rightside-up. Still, there's something wonderfully nostalgic and even historic about those old paperbacks. I just thumbed through my first edition of The Mad Reader and vividly recalled where I was when I read it. Like the Grinch's heart, my sense of humor grew three sizes that day.
If you just want to read Kurtzman at his best (abetted by Will Elder, Wally Wood, Jack Davis and John Severin), there are other reprintings you should seek out…including DC's forthcoming Mad Library editions in hardcover and vivid color. But if you wax melancholy for those old paperbacks, you can order reissues of the first two over at Amazon. They are The Mad Reader and Mad Strikes Back, and clicking on their names will whisk you over there to order them and give us a tiny cut. And do beware of the Potrzebie.