In the catalogue for the exhibition “What, Me Worry? The Art and Humor of Mad Magazine” the former Mad editor John Ficarra writes, “Some people remember where they were when man first walked on the moon. Others can recall where they were when they first heard the Beatles. Me, I can tell you exactly where I was the first time I ever saw a copy of MAD Magazine.” On a value-per-laugh basis, Mad couldn’t be beat. Each issue was a satirical horn of plenty, every spread as dense with lunatic detail as the album cover of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band or Hieronymus Bosch’s The Garden of Earthly Delights. Mad, which ceased publication in 2018, was the work of many artists, each with his or her (but mostly his) own style. (DC Entertainment relaunched the magazine later that year with a redesigned, bimonthly model.) Some, such as Norman Mingo, were virtuosos of naturalism; others, like Basil Wolverton, specialized in the grotesque. But they all obeyed the same aesthetic imperative: leave no negative space. Tracing the magazine’s history, this exhibition contains more than 150 original works of art. —Ash Carter