Every Cover of MAD Magazine, from 1952 to the Present: Behold 553 Covers from the Satirical Publication

For 65 years and count­ing, the pages of Mad mag­a­zine have enter­tained read­ers by sat­i­riz­ing all the cul­tur­al items, social fads, news items, and polit­i­cal issues of the moment. Through­out that span of time the cov­ers of Mad mag­a­zine have done the same, except that they’ve enter­tained every­one, even those who’ve nev­er opened an issue, whether they want it or not. Though on one lev­el designed pure­ly as dis­pos­able visu­al gags, Mad’s cov­ers col­lec­tive­ly pro­vide a satir­i­cal his­to­ry of Amer­i­ca, and one you can eas­i­ly browse at Doug Gil­ford’s Mad Cov­er Site, “a resource for col­lec­tors and fans of the world’s most impor­tant (ecch!) humor pub­li­ca­tion.”

Gil­ford start­ed the site back in 1997, a year that saw Mad’s cov­ers take on such phe­nom­e­na as The X‑Files, the Spice Girls, the Tam­agotchi, and Sein­feld. That last seizes the pre­sum­ably irre­sistible oppor­tu­ni­ty to draw Jer­ry Sein­feld scowl­ing in irri­ta­tion at “Neu­man” — not his neme­sis-neigh­bor New­man, but Mad’s mas­cot Alfred E. Neu­man, who appears in one form or anoth­er on almost all of the mag­a­zine’s cov­ers.

These sort of antics had already been going on for quite some time, as evi­denced, for instance, by the June 1973 cov­er above in which Neu­man dons a Droog out­fit to take the place of Mal­colm McDow­ell in A Clock­work Orange — or, in Mad’s, view, A Crock­work Lemon.

To see the archive’s cov­ers in a large for­mat, you need only scroll to the desired year, click on the issue num­ber, and then click on the image that appears. (Alter­na­tive­ly, those with advanced Mad knowl­edge can sim­ply pick an issue num­ber from the pull-down “Select-a-Mad” menu at the top of the page.) Gil­ford keeps the site updat­ed with cov­ers right up to the lat­est issue: num­ber three, as of this writ­ing, since the mag­a­zine “reboot­ed” this past June as it relo­cat­ed its offices from New York to Cal­i­for­nia. Recent tar­gets have includ­ed Don­ald Trump, Don­ald Trump, Don­ald Trump, and, of course, Don­ald Trump. Mad’s longevi­ty may be sur­pris­ing, but it cer­tain­ly does­n’t look like Amer­i­ca will stop pro­vid­ing the ridicu­lous­ness on which it has always sur­vived any time soon.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Gallery of Mad Magazine’s Rol­lick­ing Fake Adver­tise­ments from the 1960s

Al Jaf­fee, the Longest Work­ing Car­toon­ist in His­to­ry, Shows How He Invent­ed the Icon­ic “Folds-Ins” for Mad Mag­a­zine

Mad Magazine’s Al Jaf­fee & Oth­er Car­toon­ists Cre­ate Ani­ma­tions to End Dis­tract­ed Dri­ving

Enter “The Mag­a­zine Rack,” the Inter­net Archive’s Col­lec­tion of 34,000 Dig­i­tized Mag­a­zines

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.