Customer Reviews

Madvertising: A Mad Look at50 Years of Madison Avenue

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As a devoted MAD reader, I immediately purchased this volume when I saw it was available. I have fond memories of the MAD ad satires of my youth, and a cumulative look at this grand tradition proved to be irresistible.

MADVERTISING does offer a very enjoyable retrospective at my chuckles of yesteryear, as well as material that preceded and followed my subscription days. Naturally, the key to enjoying many of these ad satires is the witty ad copy that guys like Nick Meglin and Dick DeBartolo came up with. But despite the generous size of this book, time and again I was thwarted in my attempt to actually READ their lampoons. That's because the ads are sometimes reproduced herein at a fraction of their original size, reducing their words to micro-fonts. Dang it!

But this book does allow us to give a "hats off" to some of the magazine's illustrators and designers. Bob Clarke and (Frank) Kelly Freas in particular created artwork for MAD that was genuinely superior to the art accompanying the "real" ads of their day. In this regard, MADVERTISING does a good job reproducing their extremely clever visuals.

A great look at my favorite magazine and an inside look at Madison Avenue advertising. Needless to say the art work is flawless but I was beyond impressed with the detail described in putting together the "ads". More of a textbook than the actual magazine so if you want to just have the comics I suggest any of the other collections available. This is part of my permanent collection