Today's mail brought plenty of politics. I'm just back from vacation and there was a large pile of parcels waiting for me in the newsroom, and the first one I opened contained "MAD About Politics" (Insight Editions, $34.95), a fancy new pop-up book from "the usual gang of idiots" at MAD Magazine, and the second one contained a T-shirt featuring an especially heroic vision of Democratic candidate Barack Obama drawn by Alex Ross, one of the true superstars in comics since his landmark 1990s work on "Astro City" and "Kingdom Come." It's pretty clear it's election season, isn't it?

First, the book: I'm a big fan of MAD and, in fact, I don't really trust people who don't like it. I was talking to the novelist Brad Meltzer last week and he mentioned that MAD usually seems to be the common link between him and the people who become his closest friends. Roger Ebert has said on several occasions that MAD inspired his entire approach to film criticism and Joyce Carol Oates and Patti Smith are other vocal devotees. So I expected big things from this pop-up book. And it delivers -- although it's not as long as you would hope, neither in page count nor in historical depth.

The book is only 12 pages long but, of course, with its intricate assembly of pop-ups and pockets, this is a book you climb into, not one built for a "scan and flip" reader. There's great stuff in here, all previously published, but still great to see again. I especially enjoyed "Goodnight Room," a parody of "Goodnight Moon" as ode to the winding-down days of the Clinton administration ("Goodnight lies, Goodnight fries.Goodnight soft money with Chinese ties") and a recovered legal pad covered with George W. Bush's notes and doodles from a cabinet meeting ("Change name of state to Oilaska!").