The Mad Files

The MAD Files: Writers and Cartoonists on the Magazine that Warped America's Brain! edited by David Mikics.

Celebrate America's zaniest and most subversive magazine in 26 essays and comix from all-star contributors, including Art Spiegelman, R. Crumb, Chris Ware, and Roz Chast.

The MAD Files celebrates the magazine's impact and the legacy of the Usual Gang of Idiots who transformed puerile punchlines and merciless mockery into an art form. 26 essays and comics present a varied, perceptive, and often very funny account of MAD's significance, ranging from the cultural to the aesthetic to the personal.

Several essays are admiring profiles of the individual creators that made MAD what it was: Mort Drucker, Harvey Kurtzman, Al Jaffee, Antonio Prohias, and Will Elder. For longtime fans and new readers alike, The MAD Files is an indispensable guide to America's greatest satire magazine.

Paperback, 219 pages.

From the exhibition What, Me Worry? The Art and Humor of MAD Magazine on view June 8, 2024 through October 27, 2024 at Norman Rockwell Museum.