Mad #59 (Albert Feldstein) - Special Halloween Issue - December 1960

Number 59 was probably the worst issue since number 29.  Except for the excellent Freas cover, the stories and drawings were rather ordinary and unlike the quality expected in Mad.  Ironically, one of the best pages (34) was blank in the "No Dept."

It is possible that the Mad staff was exhausted and nearly out of ideas.  Beginning with issue number 60, new artists and writers were introduced in almost every issue.  By issue number 80, Feldstein had transformed the "usual gang of idiots" into a blend of the old and new that could be called the third "generation" of idiots.

First Generation: Mad 1-28 (Kurtzman, Elder, Wood, Davis and Jaffee)
Second Generation: Mad 29-59 (Feldstein, Drucker, Clarke, Martin, Berg, Orlando, Woodbridge, Jacobs, Siegel, Koch and Reit)
Third Generation: Mad 60-100 (Prohias, Aragones, DeBartolo, Kogen, Coker, Rickard and Hart)  [MADlog #13]

Daily Pooba articles states: "Anyone who is crazy enough to try to read this is crazy enough to try to inscribe the author's name in
(Wood)." (page 45)

Departments:
There's Gold in Them There Ills - If Doctors Advertised
Berg's-Eye View - The Mad Side-Show of "Modern Freaks"
To Spurn a Phrase - Complete Historical Quotations
Television - TV Ads We'd Like to See (The Polydent Commercial)
Don Martin - The Safecrackers; The Wonderful New Dart Set
Mutt Ado About Nothing - TV's Wonder Dog, Lizzie
Slop the Press - How to Get Complete Newspaper Coverage
A Turn for the Worse - Commercial Roulette
And Then I Wrote - How They Spent Their Summer
Take It Lying Down - New Service Organizations (For a Lazy America)
No - A Letter to the Publisher
Mine Enemy Grows Nicer - The Two Faces of World War II
The Patter of Big Feet - The Parent (From the Ages of 21 to 60)