Jack Davis and Wallace Wood’s crazed cartooning in Mad changed the art form, and comedy itself, forever. But their gonzo parody work in Mad’s sister satire title, Panic, published at the same time, is less well-known. To invert that injustice, this volume of The Fantagraphics EC Artists’ Library presents all their zany, pun-packed Panic lampoonery, especially their pomposity-puncturing movie parodies, including Davis’s “My Gun Is the Jury!” “Come Back, Little Street Car!”, “A Star Is Corn” and Wood’s “African Scream!”, “Gone With The Widow,” and “20,000 Leaks Under The Sea.” These visual volleys are verbalized by Al Feldstein (editor of Panic, later editor of Mad) and Jack Mendelsohn (prolific cartoonist and writer whose non-comics credits include TV’s Laugh-In and The Beatles’ Yellow Submarine). But the laughs don’t languish. Also included is the never-before-reprinted “V-Vampires,” a riotous romp written by the legendary Harvey Kurtzman and drawn by Wood that vanished after its initial appearance more than 70 years ago!
