film, and radio into a comic-strip world by simply featuring 
them as overheated packages. Today the ten-year-old clutches 
his or her MAD  (“Build up your Ego with MAD ”) in the same way 
that the Russian beatnik treasures an old Presley tape obtained 
from a G.I. broadcast. If the “Voice of America” suddenly 
switched to jazz, the Kremlin would have reason to crumble. It 
would be almost as effective as if the Russian citizens had 
copies of Sears Roebuck catalogues to goggle at, instead of 
our dreary propaganda for the American way of life.

     Picasso has long been a fan of American comics. The 
highbrow, from Joyce to Picasso, has long been devoted to 
American popular art because he finds in it an authentic 
imaginative reaction to official action. Genteel art, on the other 
hand, tends merely to evade and disapprove of the blatant 
modes of action in a powerful high definition, or “square,”