The Joke And Dagger Department!

This is a fabulous collection of one of MAD Magazine's most eccentric offerings. One of the great things about reading MAD Magazine was knowing what you would find between the covers. There was a movie parody by Mort Drucker, some funny observations by Dave Berg, nutty goings-on with Al Jaffee, and insane but irresistible work by Don Martin, among others. And there was always the Rube Goldberg antics of Spy Vs. Spy. 

Spy Vs. Spy was not like anything anywhere else. The distinctive and singular artwork of Antonio Prohias made this regular feature a must read, though "read" ain't quite the best word. Like Henry in the Sunday funnies, the Spy Vs. Spy strip was pantomime, a silent ballet with all the essential information needed to get the gag communicated silently through the spare sharp drawings. As the White Spy and the Black Spy attempted to foil one another endlessly we were treated to a lovely and astonishing dance of danger and death and all to make us laugh.

Produced in the era of extreme political tensions between East and West, this strip poked a hole in the pomposity which often attached itself to that geopolitical struggle and reduced all those endless speeches, proclamations, and maneuvers to a singular struggle between two equally absurd antagonists. The point of Spy Vs. Spy is that no one ever won, not for long anyway. Those days felt like that sometimes.

The conflict between East and West has dimmed in recent decades, so these little visual gags have lost some of their immediacy and some of their poignancy. But the craftsmanship by Prohias during his lifetime run on unquestioned. 

The series like so many of the MAD offerings was collected in a series of successful standalone paperbacks in the days when the spinner racks were teeming with such faire. For me, only the work of Don Martin is more desirable. 

Other artists have taken the helm of the series since the passing of Prohias, most notably Peter Kuper, who has been batting them out for decades himself. Now that MAD has gone into something of a Sleeping Beauty like slumber, mostly reprints, the cache of the magazine loses its luster. But we remember when there was nothing more of the moment than finding out which Spy won this time. 

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