Mad #175 (Albert Feldstein) - Umbrella Issue - June 1975

There are 50 umbrellas on the cover and it's not raining.  Is that wacky?  I don't get it.

Albert Feldstein is a great magazine editor but he still makes mistakes.  According to interviews I have read, Feldstein always laid out the word balloons for the parodies and insisted that the artists follow the pattern.  But, he made a major mistake in "Mad's College Football Coach of the Year" (or maybe it was rebellious artist Jack Davis who blew it).  On page 36, frame three, the football coach is asking the questions and the interviewer has the silly answers.  I doubt that this would have happened with anal Harvey Kurtzman editing but he could never keep a publishing schedule anyway.  My conclusion is that Lou Silverstone's story was so dull that neither Feldstein nor Davis noticed or cared that the balloons did not match. [JAM 6/23/2010]

Look for Lucy Van Pelt in "Barnacle Groans" and every MGM star (drawn by Mort Drucker) in "What's Entertainment?"

Reader Neil Wahlert found Dick DeBartolo, Jerry DeFuccio, Dave Berg and Mitch Berg in "Photo Monotony."

Barnacle has a bandage on the x-ray of his lung. (page 43)

Reader Tony Perodeau has suggested that "The Prisoner's Last Request" was Don Edwing's idea.

Departments:
Best Footage Forward - What's Entertainment?
Don Martin - One Morning on an Assembly Line; The Prisoner's Last Request; One Morning in a Hospital
Credit-Ability Gap - Rich Is Better
Advice to the Forlorn - What Is a Guidance Counselor?
Berg's-Eye View - The Lighter Side of Chores
Round-Trip-Schtick - A Mad Look at Commuting
Vanishing Americanisms - Has Anybody Ever Really Seen ... ?
Joke And Dagger - Spy vs. Spy
Film-Flam - Photo Monotony
Doin' the Varsity Dragon - Mad's College Football Coach of the Year
Fate Accompli - It's Bad Timing When
Shoe Biz - Footnotes to History
Tired Bloodhound - Barnacle Groans

Fold-In - April Fool (in the June issue?)