Celebrate America's zaniest and most subversive magazine in 26 essays and comix from all-star contributors, including Roz Chast, Jonathan Lethem, and Grady Hendrix.Before SNL and the wise-guy sarcasm of Letterman and Colbert, before The Simpsons and online memes, there was . . . MAD.A mainstay of countless American childhoods, MAD magazine exploded onto the scene in the 1950s and gleefully thumbed its nose at all the postwar pieties. MAD became the zaniest, most subversive satire magazine ever to be sold on America’s newsstands, anticipating the spirit of underground comix and ’zines and influencing humor writing in movies, television, and the internet to this day.Edited by David Mikics, The MAD Files celebrates the magazine’s impact and the legacy of the Usual Gang of Idiots who transformed puerile punchlines and merciless mockery into an art form. 26 essays and comics present a varied, perceptive, and often very funny account of MAD’s significance, ranging from the cultural to the a
