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Tom Motley, Ed. Made out of “Mac”, 2009.

This is a fun and impressive minicomic, a series of variations and transformations of what is perhaps the single most-parodied page of comics ever, the famous “Insult that Made a Man out of ‘Mac'” comic used to advertise the Charles Atlas correspondence bodybuilding course in old comic books. Rather than freeform parody or political satire–strategies often used in the past–this collection submits the source comic to a series of formal constraints (drawn primarily from the work of Oulipo), opening new vistas of post-modernism, literary allusion, absurdist humor, and even a touch of the poetic. You can order copies of this photocopied minicomic here.

Age: high school and up, though a little risqué at points!

The original comic