Comic books were a major part of my literary education, as it was for so many of my fellow Baby Boomers. Most enjoyable for me were Classics Illustrated.
This series of beautifully illustrated renditions of classic lit blossomed after World War II, and ran right up to 1971, topping out at 169 titles. I had a whole bunch of them, the most memorable (for me) being:
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
The Count of Monte Cristo
Men of Iron
Robin Hood
The Three Musketeers
The Knights of the Round Table
Tom Sawyer
I’d ride my bike on a lazy Saturday down to Green’s Drug Store in Woodland Hills, and check out the comic books. I wasn’t into Superman or Batman. For some odd reason I liked Archie.
But I loved Classics Illustrated.
I had a trunk in my room where I threw in my old comic books and baseball cards. I wasn’t thinking like a collector then. Neither was my mom, who eventually tossed out the whole thing. I was in shock, for also in that trunk were many issues of the other major influence on my young life.
My big brother read Mad magazine religiously, so I got them secondhand. That’s how I learned about politics. Like during the Kennedy administration. I only knew who Castro and Khrushchev were because of Mad.
In those years the magazine had literate, educated satirists, able to skewer sacred cows with a precise wit that appealed to adults, too. And the artists! Here I must call out two of my favorites—Mort Drucker, master caricaturist; and Don Martin, whose mind-bending cartoons blew right past the safe and predictable into uncharted realms of hilarity.
Of all the talent, though, my absolute favorite was the poet laureate of Mad, Frank Jacobs. He did the libretti for many of the Mad satires of famous movie musicals. I also have a first edition of his legendary collection, Mad For Better of Verse. The amazing thing about Jacobs is that his satirical songs always scanned perfectly along with the originals. He never hit a bad note.
Here's an example. One of the first political pieces I remember from Mad is East Side Story, a send-up, of course, of the Leonard Bernstein-Stephen Sondheim musical. It was Jacobs at his best, along with the fantastic caricatures of Drucker (both Drucker and Jacobs made to 91. Comedy is healthy!)
Remember how West Side Story begins with the “The Jet Song”?
When you're a Jet
You're a Jet all the way
From your first cigarette
To your last, dying day!
Well, East Side Story begins outside the U.N., with all the major Communists of the day, led by Nikita Khrushchev, snapping fingers and singing:
When you're a Red
You're a Red all the way
From your first Party purge
To your last power play!
When you're a Red
You've got agents galore;
You give prizes for peace
While they stir up a war!
You set off a test,
And when you're halfway through it–
You point at the West
And say they drove you to it!
That's how you do it!
We are the Reds ... With a punch in the face ... Which we're aiming today ... At the whole human race ...
At the whole–! Ever–! Trusting–! Human–! Race!
Genius.
And whenever Mad turned its gimlet eye upon social structures, it skewered with unerring insight. As in their 1961 send-up of the suburbs, titled “A Child’s-Eye View of The Affluent Society.” Look at the chapter called “The Lessons” and tell me it’s not still timely:
Children in the suburbs are kept very busy.
They are forced to take many lessons
Lessons on how to dance,
Lessons on how to play musical instruments.
What does the suburban child learn at these lessons?
He learns that he is pleasing his parents!
Too bad he cannot take lessons
On how to be a child!
Suburban children must be a credit to their parents.
They must not lie.
They must not cheat.
They must not steal.
Poor suburban children,
They are so unprepared for the adult world!
Being a child of TV and movies, I loved the Mad satires. Some of the ones I recall from Mad’s golden age include Flawrence of Arabia, Voyage to See What's on the Bottom, Botch Casually and the Somedunce Kid, and my personal favorite, Hack, Hack, Sweet Has-Been. This was a combo satire of the films Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte and Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? It featured the following cast: Olivia DeHackhand, Bette Devious, Joan Clawfoot, Joseph Cuttin, Agnes Gorehead ... and Greer Garson as a headless torso.
I ask you, what child soaked in such material could fail to grow up into a happy and productive citizen?
Sadly, Mad closed up shop in 2019. I miss you, old friend. And whenever the kultursmog becomes thick with putridity, and the chaos of our historical moment begins to calcify, I will bring to mind Alfred E. Neuman’s immortal words to live by:
“What, me worry?”
As a girl growing up in the 1950's. strangely enough I read my father's and grandfather's favorite books My grandfather was a WW1 Army vet and spoke French and English, He taught school in a one room school house in Wyoming. and was a revenue agent with Elliot Ness, my Dad was a ww2 navy tail gunner just home from the war. I read all the Tom Swift, John Carter of Mars, the Buffalo Bill Bathtub, King Arthur, all of Zane Grey, the whole Count of Monte Christo series, all Edgar Rice Burroughs, the Conan the Barbarian series, the iliad, Lord of the rings all, the odyssey, Twilight of the Gods, Tanglewood Tales, Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn, the three Musketeers series, Lorna Doone, Treasure Island, H. G. Wells all, Jules Verne all of them, Little Women series, Ben Hur, Little House on the Prairie all, The Secret Garden, Nathaniel Hawthorne's, House of the Seven Gables. and more classics from my father and grandfather's library. Curled up in my small doll house (looked like a proper house, except kid size, apples, a coca cola in a small green glass bottle with real sugar in it, Charles Chips in a yellow can. A pillow and a blanket. I was in heaven listening to the birds and the sigh of the Lake Michigan wind whistling through the tree branches.Sleepy Hollow Washington Irving. I also used to ride my bike to the library and carry home all the books that would fit in a wire basket. My first adult card that just with my signature I could invade this vast treasure of knowledge. My parents let me read any book my heart desired. When I ran out of books I vowed to read every book in the our local neighborhood library, fiction, and non-fiction. I achieved my goal one summer before sixth grade. I even read banned books from the Catholic Church newsletter, and I wondered what the fuss was about. My Dad worked for the Milwaukee Sentinel and was president of the Typographical Union. He fought Germany and Japan in WW2 and he thought the very idea of book bans was horrible and a affront to the freedom he fought for. My brain is just fine, it didn't rot, and I turned out just fine. I still read whatever I pleased and no one will ever stop me. Thousands of books over 70 years, catch me if you can, mwahaha. I even read younger my brother's Mad Magazine. too funny especially black spy vs white spy.
My older bro (by 13 months) had stacks of comic books in his room, carefully hidden from his sisters. Maybe someday I'll tell him how many times I hacked into his space and looked at them . . . Back when hacking involved opening a smelly boy's closet and brushing dust away. Those were the days!