Mad Magazine

Basil Wolverton is one of comics' great individual stylists, a creator whose idiosyncratic imagination has impacted generations of artists, and influenced a broad spectrum of popular culture. Cartoons, hot rod art, underground comix, skate design, and nearly every form that revels in the humorous and grotesque has drawn inspiration from the exaggerated absurdities that Wolverton called forth with his twisted-yet-delicate ink lines.

Today, Mad Magazine #533 goes on sale on newsstands and in comic shops nationwide, and it sets itself aside from the previous five hundred and thirty-two issues by being the first-ever issue of the magazine to feature a celebrity guest editor: the legendary (and famously funny) musician, Weird Al Yankovic. A couple of weeks ago, we got the chance to speak with Weird Al and Mad editor-in-chief John Ficarra about this special issue. Our conversation touched on Al's personal connection to the magazine, his comedic influences, and his plans for the future.

Try to picture the prototypical Mad magazine cover in your mind. There's a good chance that whatever you're imagining is in the style of cartoonist Jack Davis, who announced his retirement today at the age of 90.

Each weekday, ComicsAlliance brings you a carefully selected variety of links from around the web about comics and comics-related media, including movies, video games, toys, and whatever else might be worth noting. Quite frankly, these are items you may just need to know about to have a productive day. Take a look at today's hand-picked links after the jump.

It's hard to work out how Robot Chicken creative director and increasingly busy comic book writer Kevin Shinick found the time to complete 100 episodes of Mad for Warner Bros. Animation, but he did it, and it's an accomplishment he and the studio are celebrating with a double-sized anniversary show tonight on Cartoon Network. Perhaps most enticingly for ComicsAlliance readers, the episode's center

Longtime MAD Magazine artist Sergio Aragones is well known for how much stuff he can get on a page -- he's been filling the magazine's margins for decades. So just imagine what he could do with a gigantic pullout poster! Well, you don't have to imagine it. Aragones has condensed more than 60 years of MAD history in one big image for Entertainment Weekly.

Al Jaffee is an icon of cartooning. Though the artist was working for Marvel precursors Timely and Atlas comics in the 1940s and '50s, he is easily best known for the work he's produced for Mad Magazine, with his signature creation for the publication being the Mad Fold-In's he started in 1964, and still produces today. In a career that has spanned more than 70 years, Jaffee has amassed an incredi

Movies: Director Bryan Singer took to Twitter to tease some set models from the upcoming X-Men: Days of Future Past movie(s). Toys: MTV has a first look at Playmates' upcoming Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Classics Rocksteady and Bebop figures...

Toys: Sideshow Collectibles has released more images of its upcoming premium 1/6 scale DC Comics figures as part of its "12 Days of Sideshow" reveals. TV: The Today Show's Jenna Wolfe visited the MAD Magazine offices over the weekend and chatted with Editor John Ficarra, Art Director Sam Viviano and longtime MAD artist Al Jaffee...

TV: AMC teases the February 10 return of The Walking Dead with some new zombie-fighting footage. Sales: Until January 5, you can get 20 percent off of your entire purchase at the Fantagraphics online store with the code "DEJAVU". Toys: Hot Toys is teasing its upcoming line of Iron Man 3 products with an image of an unspecified Mark VIII toy...