What, Me Worry? The Art and Humor of MAD Magazine
Cincinnati Art Museum
November 21, 2025 - March 1, 2026
Irreverent, iconic and wildly influential, MAD Magazine has been making generations laugh—and think—since 1952. The Cincinnati Art Museum (CAM) invites visitors to rediscover the wit, weirdness and cultural critique that made MAD a publishing phenomenon in What, Me Worry? The Art and Humor of MAD Magazine.
Organized by the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, and co-curated by Stephanie Haboush Plunkett, Chief Curator and Rockwell Center Director of the Norman Rockwell Museum, and Steve Brodner, foremost satirical illustrator and caricaturist, What, Me Worry? traces the illustrated history of MAD from its subversive comic book roots to its status as a mainstream force in American satire. Featuring more than 150 original works of art, the exhibition highlights beloved recurring features, unforgettable caricatures and the artists and writers behind them—collectively known as the “Usual Gang of Idiots.”
From Spy vs. Spy to the famous Fold-Ins and Alfred E. Neuman’s ever-grinning face, What, Me Worry? showcases MAD’s signature blend of visual hilarity and sharp cultural commentary. Original illustrations and cartoons by Mort Drucker, Sergio Aragonés, Jack Davis, Al Jaffee, Richard Williams and many others will be on view alongside ephemera, artifacts, media and rare memorabilia.
“This exhibition invites visitors, many of whom are MAD lovers, to reminisce over the magazine’s satirical history and have a good laugh but also explore the themes and critical historical moments spoofed by MAD,” said Director of Learning & Interpretation Emily Agricola Holtrop, the exhibition’s curator at CAM. “Through laughter, generations have learned about important social moments that have shaped this country—MAD did that.”
First hitting newsstands in 1952, MAD originally launched as an EC comic book series founded by editor Harvey Kurtzman and publisher William Gaines, with its inaugural issue titled Tales Calculated to Drive You Mad. The publication’s now-legendary parodies of Superduperman (issue #4) and Starchie (issue #12)—takeoffs on the classic DC Superhero and Archie comics—launched MAD into the stratosphere. In 1955, with MAD #24, the comic was reimagined as an illustrated magazine, releasing it from the censure of the Comics Code Authority. Between 1955 and 2025, over 595 issues have been published, along with numerous of specials, books, paperbacks and compilation projects. Now part of the Warner Bros. Discovery family, managed by DC, MAD continues with curated reprints, compilations and some new features, and is available at Barnes & Noble’s newsstands, Bookazines or via subscription to fans nationwide.
CINCINNATI ART MUSEUM
Western & Southern galleries (Galleries 232 and 233)
953 Eden Park Drive, Cincinnati, OH 45202
