There is a lot to be said for clever ideas, of course, and browsing through books in a humor section we are sure to find a fair number possessing them. Such books advertise their clever ideas, usually in various prominent places on the front and back covers.

    The grasping of a clever idea by a reader comes as a cognitive flash. And the following rumble of thunder takes the form of a question, namely will the book capture and sustain the idea's promise, or will it quickly fade into a dull and receding echo of the idea's potential.

    Two books possessing incontestably clever ideas are Truer Than True Romance, by Jeanne Martinet, and X Presidents, by Robert Smigel and Adam McKay. Both these books lampoon the comic book medium, while cleverly retaining elements of vintage era comics.

    Truer Than True Romance employs ten DC Romance Comics dating from the 1940's through the 1970's. The original artwork is reproduced exactly. Martinet has provided new text. It's a great idea, and, surprisingly perhaps, Martinet manages to make it into a great book as well, developing marvelously cohesive plots and dialogue to superimpose atop the original artwork.

    Each story provides the original cover and title on a facing page along with a synopsis of the original plot. Martinet, who "only dates men with dark blue hair and sleek convertibles," also includes advice columns with original letters and new answers.

    The author's success owes a great deal to her insight that the original romances presented compulsive behavior as normal. Main characters who, under Martinet's pen, exhibit various obsessions, delusions and psychological disorders, seem meant for the roles they are unwittingly made to play. The result is painfully funny, entertaining, and even insightful from beginning to end.

    The X Presidents, which had its origins on the Saturday Night Live television show, is packaged to look like a 1970's Marvel comic, complete with a spoof of the infamous Charles Atlas body building ad, on the back cover and send away advertisements for preposterous products like "Captain America's garbage."

    The X Presidents takes its plot from The Fantastic Four, a burst of cosmic radiation giving four normal humans given extraordinary powers. In this case the radiation occurs at a celebrity golf tournament, and the recipients are ex-presidents Ford, Reagan, Carter, and Bush Sr. Unlike the Fantastic Four, however, the X Presidents are not new to possessing extraordinary powers. As X President Reagan notes, "Once again we've been given extraordinary powers." To which X President Ford rejoins, "Yes. First by the voters, and now by radioactive lightning."