Mad #31

Mad Magazine's February 1957 issue pulls off one of its cheekiest visual gags: Alfred E. Neuman's gap-toothed grin has been carved right into Mount Rushmore alongside Washington, Jefferson, Roosevelt, and Lincoln, while a cheerful family and a gleaming late-'50s automobile admire the view from below. Norman Mingo's cover painting plays the absurdity completely straight, rendering the monument and the surrounding Black Hills pines with genuine painterly care — which only makes Neuman's intrusion all the funnier. Inside, Ernie Kovacs, Al "Jazzbo" Collins, and Orson Bean lend their names to features on Poetry, Jazz, and Orson Bean, respectively, promising the kind of gleefully irreverent humor that made Mad a cultural institution by 1957.