The Treadmill Days of Christmas, day 5

Day 5: Mad

I was too young to have seen any EC comics on the newsstands. By the time I came along, they were all gone: Mad was a magazine... and a series of paperback reprints you had to read sideways.

You kids don't know what we had to go through to be entertained.

If the "Plastic Man" parody had made the cover, I would have used that one. Because it didn't, here's the "Hah! Noon!" cover from Mad #9, Feb-Mar 1954, by the great Harvey Kurtzman. Mad's comic era was somewhat uneven, but when it was good, it was genius.

Fast-forward twelve years to #105, September 1966, and cover artist Norman Mingo. Al Feldstein managed to make lightning strike twice, creating a brand-new "usual gang of idiots" and setting a standard that would sustain Mad through almost 500 regular issues and countless specials.

Previously: Day 1, Day 2, Day 3 and Day 4.