Mad #13

Mad Magazine pulls off one of its cheekiest self-aware stunts right here on the cover of issue #13 (1954): the entire title logo, masthead, and cover art are crammed into a tiny corner of a vast orange field, boasting in print that this is "the cover with the smallest title in the world." Harvey Kurtzman's cover art — a grinning girl riding a loping blue donkey — is charmingly absurd, perfectly embodying the magazine's promise of "humor in a jugular vein." At ten cents, this 1954 EC gem is Mad doing what it does best: turning the conventions of comic book publishing into the joke itself.