Al Jaffee's Mad Inventions #34628-4 [6]

Al Jaffee's *Mad Inventions …and Other Patently Absurd Contrivances* is a Warner Books paperback collecting the MAD maestro's wonderfully unhinged gadgetry, and the cover — drawn and inked entirely by Jaffee himself — sets the tone perfectly. A smug, lounging fellow reclines on a green chaise longue, lazily tapping a control panel while a robotic arm does all the painting work on his behalf, producing a portrait of MAD's gap-toothed mascot Alfred E. Neuman. It's a gleefully self-aware gag that promises exactly what the subtitle delivers: 1987 ingenuity at its most gloriously, patently absurd.