The MAD Staff Picks Their Favorite Back Covers: Associate Editor Jacob Lambert

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