Mad #56
☆ Be the first to review + Add to your collection — Join freeMad #56 (July 1960) represents the magazine at its most culturally ambitious: with a presidential election just months away, editor Al Feldstein and the 'Usual Gang of Idiots' turned the entire issue into a sustained satirical referendum on American political theater, running Alfred E. Neuman as a mock presidential candidate against caricatures of Kennedy, Nixon, Johnson, Humphrey, Stevenson, and virtually every other name in the 1960 race. The issue arrived precisely as Mad's circulation was crossing the one-million-reader mark, giving its irreverent political humor a genuinely mass-cultural footprint at a pivotal moment in American history. It also documents the breadth of Mad's satirical range in a single package—Broadway parody, advertising deconstruction, Olympic-games satire, Don Martin slapstick—all without carrying a single outside advertisement, which was itself a pointed editorial statement about independence from the commercial interests being lampooned.
In "Weak Coffee Sales Gives Us Growers Java Jitters!", EC’s Mad #56 delivers a sharp, satirical take on the coffee industry, wrapped in the signature humor of Albert B. Feldstein and John Rogers. The issue features a lively mix of reader letters—ranging from critiques of issue #54 to reactions to the TV show Four For Tonight, which spoofed Don Martin’s famed "Hair Tonic Commercial"—all rendered with the wit and irreverence that defined the era. The cover, a standout by Kelly Freas, captures the absurdity in bold, expressive lines.
In this madcap 1960 satire, comic strip icons collide in a wild parody of Broadway musicals, where Rex Morgan’s villainous plot to steal Annie’s distinctive eyes sets off a zany rescue mission. With song, dance, and classic Mad chaos, Sandy rallies Dick Tracy and Tarzan, joined by the ever-quirky Snuffy Smith, in a high-stakes, laugh-filled showdown.
In "Patty Play Dolls," a satirical take on parenting and bureaucracy, the absurd cost of maintaining a child-sized doll is laid bare—complete with a full budget breakdown. The story humorously suggests that parents should petition Congress to classify such dolls as dependents, just to qualify for a tax break.
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Al Feldstein had taken over as editor from Mad's founder Harvey Kurtzman several years earlier and had steadily expanded the magazine's stable of artists and writers; by 1960 the masthead included regulars Wally Wood, Mort Drucker, Dave Berg, and Don Martin, all of whom contributed to this issue. The Grand Comics Database records the on-sale date as May 12, 1960, sourced directly from 1960 Periodicals filings at the Copyright Office of the Library of Congress, placing it squarely ahead of the summer convention season and the November election. Writer credits in the issue were reconstructed partly from the 'Totally MAD' CD-ROM collection, reflecting how informally bylines were handled in this era of the magazine—a practice the masthead itself was only beginning to formalize by the early 1960s.
Trivia · 8 facts
- On-sale date confirmed as May 12, 1960, per Library of Congress Copyright Office periodical records cited in the Grand Comics Database.
- Edited by Al Feldstein (credited in the indicia as Albert B. Feldstein), published by E.C. Publications Inc., the surviving arm of the original EC Comics line.
- Cover and lead feature: 'Alfred E. Neuman For President,' depicting Alfred endorsed by caricatures of John F. Kennedy, Richard Nixon, Lyndon B. Johnson, Hubert Humphrey, Adlai Stevenson, Harry S. Truman, Nelson Rockefeller, and others—a who's-who of the 1960 presidential field.
- Issue includes 'The MAD Comic Opera,' a Broadway-musical parody featuring comic-strip characters including Dick Tracy, Tarzan, Little Orphan Annie, Rex Morgan, and Snuffy Smith in a comedic rescue plot.
- Features 'MAD Bubble Gum Cards' ('Chew's Who Dept.')—a satire imagining bubble-gum trading-card statistics applied to professionals rather than athletes, later reprinted in The Self-Made Mad (New American Library, c. 1971).
- The letters column references the NBC television program 'Four For Tonight,' which had aired a comedy sketch directly adapted from Don Martin's 'Hair Tonic Commercial' cartoon—an early documented instance of Mad's print content being adapted for broadcast television.
- Artists confirmed on the issue include Wally Wood, Mort Drucker, Dave Berg, and Don Martin, representing the core of Feldstein's 'Usual Gang of Idiots' at the height of their early-1960s collaboration.
- Mad carried no outside advertising in this period—a deliberate editorial policy maintained from 1957 onward so the magazine could freely satirize any commercial or political entity without conflicts of interest.
Full credits
Reprints
Reprinted in The Worst from MAD #4 (1961), More Trash from Mad #4 (1961), Mad #7 (1968), The Self-Made Mad #Y6981 (1971), Mad #37 (1972), The Completely Mad Don Martin #[nn] (1974), Mad Special [Mad Super Special] #36 (1981), Mad's videoguide #1 (1983), Mad about Comic Strips #[nn] (2003), Mad #20 (2021)
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