lelak wrote:

Personally, I think it would be great if DC went BEYOND the 23 comic book issues and kept reprinting the entire run. I never understood why Russ Cochran didn't include MAD 24-28 in the COMPLETE EC LIBRARY, especially since they were edited by Kurtzman

Have you guys read much of Kurtzman's Mad Magazine?  It's really nothing like the comic, and not nearly as good.  Kurtzman largely abandons sequential art (despite the fact he was an undisputed master of the form) and relies on far too many text articles.  Even when he does do comic stories, the layouts are static and much less innovative than his previous work.  The movie parodies lack a clear narrative structure in the manner of the stuff in the comic; you can read a story from the comic Mad without being familiar with the source material and still follow it as a comprehensible story, but this is not possible with the magazine's movie parodies.  Also, there are a lot more dated references to pop culture and figures of the day in the magazine than in the comic.  Most importantly, it's simply not as funny as the comic was.  I'm a big Kurtzman fan but this is not his best work.  I can understand why it hasn't been reprinted before as it is far more limited in appeal.