CGC certified: F- (7.5). Off-white pages; moderate amount of writing to top of 1st page in marker. Basil Wolverton cover. Kurtzman scripts. Art by Wood, Wolverton, Davis, Elder.
"Beautiful Girl of the Month" cover by Basil Wolverton, whose EC output was next-to-nil because publisher Bill Gaines considered his stuff "ugly". Even so, pretty much on the strength of this cover, The New York Times called Wolverton "the Michelangelo of MAD Magazine".
"It's like the first time you get laid... It breaks you out of something, and you'll never really have that breakthrough again... It was when I saw the cover of MAD #11, where they do that takeoff of Life magazine with the Basil Wolverton drawing. I was eleven and I'd see that on the newsstand and be puzzled by it, puzzled as hell. It was incredible. Here was this completely rude ridiculing of a venerated magazine that was part of every family's household... it was just a completely rude breakdown of everything we valued in this society." -R. Crumb interview, The Comics Journal #121 (1987).
CGC census: 3 copies graded 7.5 (24 copies graded higher). Top 30 copy. Comparable CGC sales: 7.5: No reported sales. 8.0: $396 (Dec. 2019). 7.0: $284 (May 2019).
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