Discovering that Madonna had posed nude early in her career is a bit like learning that the blond pop siren streaks her hair. Not exactly shattering news. Even so, there was the Material Girl without a stitch of material last week in not one but two flesh magazines, Playboy and Penthouse. The pictures are unremarkable art school stuff, black-and-white studies of Madonna reclining on couches and sitting on windowsills. The real pleasure came from watching Playboy and Penthouse trade taunts in an old-fashioned newsstand war.
According to Bob Guccione, publisher of Penthouse, he had the first look at Playboy's pictures, which...