The kind of humorist who will offer to tell you "the latest on Margaret O'Brien" or "the TRUTH about Dame May Whitty," might be the person the new Yale Record was written for. It is an unsuccessful parody on the comic book which never begins to realize its possibilities.

The drawing of the cartoons is a generally good approximation of the real thing-"Little Orpheum Anne," "Supergoon"-and, once or twice, is even funny in itself. But the humor of the dialogue and the situations is what tells, and it is forced, hoary, and sometimes private. It seems to depend sololy on the type of wit referred to in the first sentence: the humor of the iconoclast. Now, there's no one who enjoys more than I the prospect of Orphan Annie getting her due, which, in this instance, comes in being taken advantage of by some drunken Yaleman (and later handed over, a hopeless reprobate, to the making of Li'l Abner), but the initial joy of such humor is soon dissipated, and by the time the reader wades through a fight-fixing Joe Palooka and a baby-killing Dagwood, he begins to long for the world set right again.

In the balloons, there is much use of puns ("very-close veins"), but even more painful than that is the constant resort to New Haven, Connecticut for the setting of any situation involving actual or implied sexual orgies. This quite possibly flushes fresh life into some of the wilted egos down there, but isn't it rather absurd?

Two years ago, the Yale Record was a very funny magazine as I remember it, and the Lampoon was a very unfunny magazine. This paradox has been properly destroyed by the recent efforts of the two publications. The latest issue of the Lampoon contains some really topnotch cartoons and, more surprising, some amusing stories. The cartoon, "The New Overcoat," by Fred Gwynne, is timeless and rich enough to rate reprinting in the Lampoon in ten years or so, as will probably be the case.

Of the stories, "Nobody Here is Quite Game Enough," is the most memorable though neither the best written nor the most humorous. It tells about a wild chase two fellows make up and down the Eastern Seaboard attending parties held the same day but several hundred miles apart. Another story, "Banker's Holiday," is a suspiciously whimsical piece for the Lampoon. I say 'suspiciously' because I was expecting some dirty little hoax at the conclusion, but the author maintains the fantasy through the ending, and, except for its length and occasional awkwardness of diction ("Tom began to laugh. 'Oh hell,' he choked.") it is a creditable bit of fantasy.

"The Glory that was Greece" is a classic example of the worst type of college "humor." Setting off on a questionably clever tangent, it deals, in a jazz improvisation, with Penelope and Odysseus, referred to as Penny and Odie.

An example of some the best in college humor is "At the Pleasure XXII." It treats, with outlandish seriousness, the recent Fisher Affair with its "Cloak and Dagger" aspects. The author presents some imaginary notes from the diary of the harried undergraduate underground organizer. "Wednesday. Enervated this morning. I think I am being poisoned by my enemies . . . To Students' Clinic in Hygiene Building, where examined after registering under false name . . . Retired early. Arranged some pillows to appear like sleeping form in my bed, spent the night on floor underneath . . ."

With such stories as this one, the Lampoon becomes not only a humor magazine, but a real public service.