Get Lost

I'm catching up on the MAD knock-off magazines of the late 50s and 60s. Some of them flat out stunk.Not this one. Good writing and graphics. The others either went for long small blocks of text to tell a story or went the girlie lad route. So many drawings of triangles on the human form.This publication understood satire and parody. But there were so many imitators they didn't have a chance.

The artwork is fantastic. I love Jack Davis, and Ross Andru's stuff kind of apes off Jack's, but with it's own style and flair. Some of his stuff really grabs me. The writing is pretty good too. Another reviewer said they didn't get any laughs off the writing compared with Mad, but I disagree. Mad mag from the same era was filled with 50's humor where the laughs can be a bit few and far between, and it's the same here, you have to take the good with the out-dated. There's no difference. If you love this era and style, if you love Jack Davis and those 50's humour illustrations and stylings, grab this! Personally, I love this stuff.And this looks like it was more-or-less a 2-man team. Very different to Mad Magazine's and EC comics outfit of lots of staff members. These guys did a LOT with not very much.I can see why Harvey Kurtzman didn't like this though. It definitely was trying to take it's own direction using Mad as a very obvious model. Sad that this magazine got shut down so early. Could have been something. It was something!

When  Mad  became a success in the early 1950s, other comic book publishers decided to publish their own satire comics. As far as I know, Get Lost is the first Mad comic book imitator to be reprinted. It was created by  Ross Andru and Mike Esposito , who are probably best known for doing war comics for DC Comics. All three issues of Get Lost are reprinted here. The stories are mostly parodies of movies, books and comics. Some of the movies parodied include  Shane , Hondo  and  The Thing . Other parodies include Dr. Jeckyl & Mr. Hyde, Flash Gordon, the Invisible Man and Robin Hood. Some of the parodies are funny, some of them not so much. Of course, if you aren't familiar with the thing being parodied, you probably won't understand the parody. Everything is very well drawn, anyway. This will probably be of interest only to fans of the old Mad comic book or fans of Andru & Esposito. MadRoss Andru and Mike EspositoShaneHondoThe Thing

Loads of this type of material was published in the fifties, and this IMHO deserves a place among the best. I have an original (#2) in my collection and I can attest the color reproduction is spot-on if not better. This is the way to enjoy those 'older' comics if you are like any typical collector and cannot afford a nice copy of the original. There is commentary inside by the comic creators that is revealing of the times and circumstances when these comics were published. Business is brutal - but at least some got the chance to share thier visions and humor with the rest of us!Highly recommended - you wont be disappointed. I wish we would see a resurgence of this type of graphic art!

Funny collection of a competitor of Mad Magazine from back in the 50's when we were allowed to be funny.