The baseball announcer on Page 4 of the story is meant to represent Mel Allen, who was the well-known play-by-play announcer for the New York Yankees in the 1950s. If you look closely, the suspension microphone he's using has the letters MEL on top, rather than radio station's call letters. Also, the parody name given to Yankees catcher Yogi Berra -- Yeggi Borra -- includes the Yiddish word "yegg," a slang term for a robber, burglar or safecracker.

i looooove these. I bought a lil anthology of different mad comics and fell in love with bill elder's style immediately. There was a mickey mouse parody, shermlock shomes, G.I. Schmoe... amazing stuff.

Nice one guys. I had a reprint of #3 or #4 I got stapled into a MAD I got in '79 or something like that. Wore the hell out of it, fascinated by the hideousness of Wolverton, and the sheer energy of Kurtzman. Probably my first contact with real cartooning.

i live near sydney australia, and was stoked to find red room in the local book shop. keep it up boys. great work

Great dissection of an issue of Mad from two great artists.

Bravo gentlemen!!! Thanks so much for the flip through and discussion on this one!

The syncopation of panels between pages is an amazing detail that really affects the unconscious story telling. Edit: spelling.

Jack Davis didn't do good cartooning, he did GREAT cartooning! Sometimes I feel the colors got in the way of his drawings. I have an EC book with Jack Davis black and white drawings; they are AMAZINGLY stunning!

Love that Jack Davis cover! I actually have Mad #2 downloaded on my Kindle; all in all, a pretty damn good issue!

Jello parfait was not Jello and ice cream, but Jello layered with whipped cream.

I just got the Cochran Mad slipcase, very excited to dig into these legendary comics.

Picture Stories From the Bible was reprinted in two hardcovers in the late 70's by Scarf Press. The reprint is well-produced, but all of the art is by a guy named Don Cameron, a very bland Golden Age style artist. I just checked Amazon and they're still getable, for the EC fan-addicts out there.

What an absolute pleasure to look through an og issue of Mad. Thanks. More, please. Also can you do Marshal Law? I feel its long overdue.

Thanks for the great video. I've slept on so many great comics creators and this channel has definitely helped me see the error of my ways.

Icecream and Jello = 3 thumbs up! Give it a try!

Going on a journey to like each and every one of your fuckin videos.

Casey's not turned into the charm. Look again at the last panel . He and the witch are silhouetted by the moon on a broomstick, behind the guys. The charm was something Casey's pal gave him.

Right. I'm thinking of Gookum in it's own time period... And I genuinely think it was Kurtzman being eclectic. Because what colour is the Gookum?... it's Red... Kurtzman was notoriously very specific with his comics and that's not a coincidence I don't think. And it's a comic of the 50s during the height of the Cold War and the fight against "The Red Menace". Because that's what the majority of 50s Sci Fi was at the time was jingoistic "America is awesome! But the Reds are evil and Communism must be stopped!" Which is even funnier because the alien is kind of just an absolute ass hole who saves his own selfish skin, beats up his servant, and 50s Sci Fi always has the twist of the knife ending which is meant to be "SOYLENT GREEN IS PEOPLE" or "The Planet of the Apes was OUR planet!!" Only Kurtzman goes "RED JELLO IS GOING TO KILL US ALL!"

The Mole is my most disliked Mad story ever. It impressed on my young brain as a waking nightmare, I really lost sleep over this one. It's beautiful and ugly at the same time.