This Magazine Is Crazy #4

It's All in Your Mind! is a humorous look at the gap between fantasy and reality: a man fantasizes about his romantic conquests at the office, but the actual story is far less glamorous than his daydreams suggest. With pencils credited as Jato, this 1958 piece from This Magazine Is Crazy captures the deflating truth that our self-aggrandizing tales rarely match what really happened—we're all better storytellers than we are heroes.

When a young man named Pelvis gets drafted, the military brass struggles to figure out where to place him—until his commanding officers discover his magnetic appeal sends the entire base into chaos, leading to a completely unexpected solution that dismantles the draft entirely. This 1958 satire by Wart Molker is a tongue-in-cheek jab at military bureaucracy and celebrity culture, packed with the irreverent humor that made This Magazine Is Crazy such a cult favorite.

A budding cartoonist learns that becoming a big-time artist—and earning serious money—is as simple as following a step-by-step drawing course, complete with helpful plates on anatomy, style, and the secret ingredient: recycled puns. Then Dr. Thadeus Kranz introduces readers to his famous ink-blot test, walking through case studies that reveal just how differently people can interpret the same messy splotch, and what that might say about their state of mind.

May March, a kindhearted artists' model in Greenwich Village, decides to help out Salvador Bali, a broke impressionist painter who believes in his own genius despite his complete lack of success. When his financial situation becomes truly desperate and he can't even afford paint supplies, May makes an unconventional sacrifice to support his art—one that turns her own body into his canvas. It's a funny, touching story about art, ambition, and what it takes to be a patron of the struggling artist.