List of Mad issues

The humor magazine Mad has had a consecutive run for well over sixty years, making a transition over the years from color comic book to black-and-white magazine to color magazine, presenting a constant parade of parodies.
Cultural impact
When Harvey Kurtzman began editing Mad in 1952, his intention was simply to satirize comic book genres. He had no idea that his comic book was destined to become a publishing phenomenon that would reach a circulation of 2,132,655 by 1974, be reprinted in slick, full-color hardcover slipcased editions and transform the culture of the 20th Century. The cultural significance of Kurtzman and his creation were noted by the Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Art Spiegelman:
:Kurtzman's Mad held a mirror up to American society, exposing the hypocrisies and distortions of mass media with jazzy grace and elegance. He's our first post-modern humorist, laying the groundwork for such contemporary humor and satire as Saturday Night Live, Monty Python and Naked Gun.
Only three years after it began, Mad was catalogued in Harvard's Houghton Library.
Evolution and expansion
Kurtzman's expansion to parodies of radio, films and television was a step-by-step evolution, and not all readers were familiar with the numerous satirical sources and references, including some drawn from contemporary and classical literature. Readers could have enjoyed the first issue of Mad without being aware that it featured a lampoon of an E. M. Forster short story and a reference to the sound effects in James Thurber's short story, "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty."
Such sources are illuminated in the following sequential listing of all Mad issues. It also includes the debuts of notable contributors. As with all parodies, a knowledge of the subjects being satirized is necessary for a full understanding of the humor. The early Mad poetry lampoons are an exception to this rule, since they used the original text of notable poems but added exaggerated, extreme cartoon illustrations.<ref name=russ/>
List of issues
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