Mad #536

Mad's beloved gap-toothed mascot Alfred E. Neuman takes center stage in a MasterChef Junior apron, cheerfully brandishing a chef's knife while a caricature of Gordon Ramsay looms behind him with an expression of pure, wide-eyed horror — the chopping board in front of them featuring some wonderfully unsettling culinary results. Ward Sutton's cover art for issue #536 (December 2015) is a pitch-perfect send-up of the cooking competition phenomenon, capturing both Alfred's blissful obliviousness and Ramsay's trademark intensity in one sharp image. Rounding out the package are promised features on The Hunger Games vs. the NFL, Hulk Hogan, and a 2016 Star Wars calendar — making this a genuinely packed issue for fans of MAD's particular brand of cultural skewering.