MAD has a long history of running a wide variety of material on our back covers: fake ads, magazine parodies, comics, and more. To wrap up 2012, each member of the MAD staff selected a favorite back cover and explained why this one stands out above hundreds of others. Come back tomorrow to see the last pick, and to read them all, click here! 

MAD #90, October 1964
Selected by Art Director Sam Viviano

Sam says: "The best use of MAD's back cover, for me, was as a vehicle for ad parodies, which were always so carefully put together that at first look they seemed to be the real thing. This back cover features a takeoff of the ads for Breck Shampoo which had been running for decades in magazines such as Ladies’ Home Journal and Harper's Bazaar. These ads featured pastel portraits of beautiful young women with silky long hair, rendered from 1936 to 1957 by Charles Sheldon and thereafter by the illustrator Ralph William Williams. (The campaign ended with Williams' death in 1976.) MAD's takeoff, with the headline, "Make Beautiful Hair BLECCH," portrayed — rather than a beautiful young woman with long, silky hair — a not-so-beautiful young man with long, silky hair (a novelty in 1964) — specifically, Ringo Starr, drummer for the Beatles. The portrait itself was painted with full Ralph William Williams lusciousness by infrequent MAD contributor Frank Frazetta. As an impressionable 11-year-old, I was fascinated by how a single image could be both beautiful and grotesque, precisely accurate and extravagantly exaggerated. It firmed up my ambition, already stoked by countless pages of Mort Drucker art, to pursue a career as a humorous illustrator."

Artist: Frank Frazetta

MAD has a long history of running a wide variety of material on our back covers: fake ads, magazine parodies, comics, and more. To wrap up 2012, each member of the MAD staff selected a favorite back cover and explained why this one stands out above hundreds of others. Come back tomorrow to see another pick, and to read them all, click here! 

MAD #308, January 1992
Selected by Senior Editor Joe Raiola

Joe says: "At the risk of blowing my own comedy horn, this parody of an NRA ad, which I wrote with my pal Charlie Kadau, is among my favorite MAD back covers. First, in the pre-Photoshop era, Irving Schild’s photographic wizardry was simply astonishing. But what I love best about this is the back story. Soon after the spoof was published, MAD was deluged with hundreds of letters from angry NRA members, each threatening to 'boycott our advertisers' — at a time when the magazine was advertiser-free. You can’t make this stuff up!"

Writers: Joe Raiola & Charlie Kadau
Photo: Irving Schild

MAD has a long history of running a wide variety of material on our back cover: fake ads, magazine parodies, comics, and more. To wrap up 2012, each member of the MAD staff selected a favorite back cover and explained why this one stands out above hundreds of others. Come back tomorrow to see another pick, and to read them all, click here! 

MAD #60, January 1961
Selected by Associate Editor Dave Croatto

Dave says: "For me, this back cover demonstrates just how smart MAD can be about its stupidity. In fact, even after 50 years, the cover still feels innovative, clever and daring. Unlike most back covers, it’s not a stand-alone, one-page gag. Instead, it’s part of a larger, ambitiously-dumb joke on the part of the editors. This issue was scheduled to appear on newsstands the day after the election — making it impossible for MAD to know the winner in time to get him on the cover.  So, MAD did the next best thing — they congratulated BOTH candidates! On the front cover was Nixon, while Kennedy was on the back cover (printed upside down so the magazine would appear to open properly!). News agents were sent a letter instructing them to display the cover with the winner on it — and the Usual Gang of Idiots would look like geniuses (for, I assume, the first and last time). I can’t imagine any young reader picking up this issue and not having their mind completely blown…twice. First, that MAD was able to predict the winner, then again when they realized how MAD had cheated in such a fantastic, smart-ass way."

Artist: Bob Clarke

MAD has a long history of running a wide variety of material on our back covers: fake ads, magazine parodies, comics, and more. To wrap up 2012, each member of the MAD staff selected a favorite back cover and explained why this one stands out above hundreds of others. Come back tomorrow to see another pick, and to read them all, click here! 

MAD #278, April 1988
Selected by Associate Editor Jacob Lambert

Jacob says: "This was one of the first issues I received as a nine-year-old subscriber, and it’s fair to say that 'Sports Titillated' blew my young mind. The image was upside-down, so that when you flipped it, it felt like you had a whole new magazine in your hands. I was also desperate for anything that approximated the real Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue, which my mother had confiscated in an act of protective monstrousness. These two factors, along with a vague undercurrent of strangeness — am I supposed to find her attractive or not? — made this issue one of my early favorites. 'Sports Titillated' seems fairly weak to me now, but, as is so often the case with MAD, it hit me at the right time."

Photo: Irving Schild