Mad #3

From EC's irreverent humor anthology comes this January/February 1953 gem, promising "Tales Calculated to Drive You Mad" for just a dime. Harvey Kurtzman's cover sets the tone perfectly: a nervous, bug-eyed man in a green suit stands among the gravestones of a moonlit cemetery, stammering that there's "no one here but a little child!" — while that "little child," a tiny, bat-winged vampire, grins up at him from below. Inside, Harvey Kurtzman writes alongside artist and inker John Severin, colorist Marie Severin, and letterer Ben Oda, delivering the kind of sharp, gleefully absurd satire — "humor in a jugular vein" — that made Mad a sensation.