Popular Jokes #17

This May 1965 humor digest from Marvel promises exactly what its tagline delivers: "Gems of Mirth — Laughter, Humor, and Fun." The cover, signed by Ward, sets the tone with a classic doctor-patient gag — a wide-eyed physician in a white coat holds a reflex hammer and delivers a deadpan verdict to "Miss Mays," a glamorous red-dressed brunette perched on an examination table, her crossed legs apparently the subject of his very thorough testing. At a quarter a copy, this was an affordable ticket to the kind of lighthearted, wink-and-nudge comedy that made digest humor magazines a staple of mid-1960s newsstands.